Thirdly, your High Mightinesses are requested to alter the ordinary letters of reprisal according to the circumstances of the times, and to the actual condition of affairs, in the form thereof drawn up. 4. Finally, your High Mightinesses are requested to grant or allow to the Company, provisionally or until its circumstances shall be improved, the import duty on all sugars and other products which shall be brought hither by another route from Brasil, in regard that they are products of the Company's district, and the Board of Admiralty ought not to derive any profit from the misfortune that hath overtaken the Company there.

Re-solution of the Common Council of the City of Amsterdam. [ From the Hesolutien van de VroedacMppen, A., p. 76, in the Stad Huys, Amsterdam. ]

2.^ March, 1656. '^^^ Burgomastcrs havo also further represented, that the Committee appointed Holland Documents ^^••^- of February last, to consider what should be done for and requested on the IS""

the promotion of the affairs in New Netherland, had first consulted thereupon with some

Directors of the West India Company only, and secondly with them in presence of their Honors, who request, as some of the committee must leave the city and as their Honors had full knowledge of the matter, to report thereon in their name, and the Burgomasters have therefore reported :

That, in brief, it had been proposed and as it were concluded in the Conference, that in case people enough were sent from this country thither, all the products that come at present from the Baltic, masts inclusive, could be found and raised in New Netherland. That all the lands the Company possess there had been purchased from the Indians or Inhabitants, under proper and voluntary conveyance executed before the Supreme Magistrates there, according to the Deeds thereof remaining with them, so that they owned those lands justo titulo, both as regards the aforesaid Indians and all other circumjacent Europeans.