to the notice of their lords and
patrons what they had to complain of. But passing by this point,
and leaving the consideration thereof to the discretion of your High
Mightinesses, he observes preliminary and generally, that it could
as easily and with more truth be denied, than by them it is odiously
affirmed.

(1) In New Netherland. Van Tienhoven prepared this answer
in Holland.

Coming then to the matter, I will only touch upon those points as to
which either the Managers or the Directors are arraigned. In regard to
point No. 1, I deny, and it never will appear, that the Company have
refused to permit our people to make settlements in the country, and
allow foreigners to take up the land.

The policy of the Company to act on the defensive, since they had not
the power to resist their pretended friends, and could only protect
their rights by protest, was better and more prudent than to come to
hostilities.

Trade has long been free to every one, and as profitable as ever.
Nobody's goods were confiscated, except those who had violated their
contract, or the order by which they were bound; and if anybody thinks
that injustice has been done him by confiscation, he can speak for
himself. At all events it does not concern these people.

As for their complaining that the Christians are treated like the
Indians in the sale of goods, this is admitted; but this was not done by
the Company, nor by the Directors, because (God help them) they have
not had anything there to sell for many years. Most of the remonstrants,
being merchants or factors, are themselves the cause of this, since
they are the persons who, for those articles which cost here one
hundred guilders, charge there, over and above the first cost, including
insurance, duties, laborer's wages, freight, etc., one and two hundred
per cent. or more profit. Here can be seen at once how these people lay
to the charge of the Managers and their officers the very fault which
they themselves commit. They can never show, even at the time the
Company had their shop and magazines there well supplied, that the goods
were sold at more than fifty per cent. profit, in conformity with the
Exemptions. The forestalling of the goods by one and another, and their
trying to get this profit, cannot be prevented by the Director, the
more so as the trade was thrown open to both those of small and those of
large means.

It is a pure calumny, that the Company had ordered ha