...somewhat resembling the laudable government of the
Fatherland," to accord greater economic freedom, and to
settle with foreign governments those disputes respecting
colonial boundaries and jurisdiction the constant agitation
of which so unsettled the province and impeded its growth.

The following document accompanied the memorial, bearing date
two days later, July 28, 1649, and was signed by the same
eleven men. It is considered probable that Adriaen van der
Donck was its main author. Its first part, descriptive of
the province, reads like a preliminary sketch for his
_Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant_ ("Description of New
Netherland"), a very interesting work published at Amsterdam
six years later (1665, second edition 1656), and of which a
translation appears in the _Collections of the New York
Historical Society_, second series, I. 125-242.

With respect to the remaining, or political portion of its
contents, it is only fair for the reader to remember that
it is a body of ex parte statements, and should be compared
with those made on behalf of the administration by Secretary
van Tienhoven in his _Answer_, the document immediately
following this. Stuyvesant, whatever his faults of temper--
love of autocratic power, lack of sympathy with the life of
a community already far from austere, vindictiveness even--
conceived of his province as a political community, not
solely as a commercial possession, and honestly tried to
govern it with an eye to its own best interest. The directors,
moreover, could truthfully say that many of their narrowest
actions were prescribed by their instructions from the West