ble appearance. The fort was crumbling to ruins. The skeleton
of an unfinished church deformed the view. The straggling fences were
broken down. The streets were narrow and crooked, many of the houses
encroaching upon them. The foul enclosures for swine bordered the
thoroughfares.

A system of taxation upon both exports and imports was introduced,
which speedily replenished the treasury. Governor Stuyvesant was a
professing christian, being a devout member of the Reformed Church of
the fatherland. He promptly transferred his relations to the church at
fort Amsterdam. He became an elder in the church, and conscious that
the christian religion was the basis of all prosperity, one of his
first acts was the adoption of measures for the completion of the
church edifice. Proprietors of vacant lots were ordered to fence them
in and improve them. Surveyors of buildings were appointed to regulate
the location and structure of new houses.

The embarrassments which surrounded the governor were so great that he
found it necessary to support his authority by calling public opinion
to his aid. "Necessity," writes Brodhead, "produced concession and
prerogative yielded to popular rights. The Council recommended that
the principle of representation should be conceded to the people.
Stuyvesant consented."

An election was ordered and eighteen "of the most notable, reasonable,
honest and respectable persons" in the colony were chosen, from whom
the governor was to select nine persons as a sort of privy council. It
is said that Stuyvesant was very reluctant to yield at all to the
people, and that he very jealously guarded the concessions to which he
was constrained to assent. By this measure popular rights gained
largely. The _Nine Men_ had however only the power to give advice when
it was asked. When assembled, the governor could attend the meeting
and act as president.

Governor Stuyvesant, soon after his arrival at fort Amsterdam,
addressed courteous letters to the governors of all the neighboring
colonies. In his letter to Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, he
asserted the indubitable right of the Dutch to all the territory
between the Connecticut and the Delaware, and proposed an interview
for the settlement of all difficulties.

An Amsterdam ship, the Saint Benino, entered the harbor of New Haven,
and for a month engaged in trade without a license from the West India
Company. Stuyvesant, ascertaining the fact, sent a company