332         REPRESENTATION  OP  NEW   NETHERLAND.----NOTES.
" It will never appear that 30,000 guilders are collected from the commonalry in Stuyvesant's time ; for nothing is received besides the beer and wine excise, which amounts to about 4,000 guilders on the Marohatans. From the other villages situated around it there is little or nothing collected, because there are no tapsters, except one at the Ferry,* and one at Flushing.
" There is nothing confiscated belonging to the. commonalty, and only contraband goods of foreigners; and of these nobody's goods are confiscated without good cause.
" The question is whether the Honorable Company or the Directors are bound to construct any works for the commonalty out of the recognitions which the trader pays in New Netherland for goods exported, especially as those duties were allowed to the Company by their High Mightinesses for the establishment of garrisons, and the expenses which they would thereby incur, and not for the construction of hospitals, orphan asylums, or churches and school-houses.
" The charge that the property of the Company is neglected in order to make friends, cannot be sustained by proof.
" The provisions in exchange for the negroes who came from Tamandare were sent to Curagoa, except a portion consumed on the Manhatans, as the accounts will show ; but all these are matters which do not concern these persons, especially as they are not accountable for them.
" As to what relates to the contract of the free persons, the Director has graciously granted the negroes who were the Company's slaves, to give them their freedom in consequence of their long service, on condition that their children should remain slaves, who are not treated otherwise than as Christians. At present (here are only three of these children who do any service, one of them is at the House of Hope,t one at the Company's bouwery, and one with Martin Cri-gier, who has brought the girl up well, as everybody knows.
" That the Heer Stuyvesant should build up, alter and repair the Company'* property was his dutys For the consequent loss or profit he will answer to the Company.
" The burghers upon the island of Manhatans, and thereabouts, must know that nobody comes or is admitted to New Netherland, (being a conquest,) except upon this condition, that he shall have nothing to say, and shall acknowledge himself under the sovereignty of their High Mightinesses, the States General, and the Lords Bewinthebbers, as their Lords and patrons, and should be obedient to the Director and Council for the time being, as good subjects are bound to be.
" Those who have complained about the haughtiness of Stuyvesant, 1 think, are such as seek to live without law or rule.
" Their complaint that no regulation was made in relation to sewan is untrue. During the time of Director Kieft, good sewan passed at four for a stiver, and the loose bits were fixed at six pieces for a stiver. The reason why the loose sewan was not prohibited, was because there was no coin in circulation, and the laborers, boors, and other common people having no other money, would be great losers; and had it been done, the remonstrants would, without doubt, have included it among their grievances.^
" Nobody can prove that Director Stuyvesant had used foul language to, or railed at as clowns, any persons of respectability who had treated him decently. It may be that some profligate has given the Director, if he has used any bad words to him, eause to do so.
* This was In Brooklyn. The village of Breukelen was a mile distant from the river; and the hamlet at the river was called The Ferry.
t On the Connecticut River.
X Sewan long continued to be a part of the currency among the whites as well as the Indians, and was even paid in the Sunday collections in the churches. It was made for the most part of the shell of the hard clam ; that made out of the blue part or heart of the shell having the highest value. It was in shape and size like common beads, and was perforated longitudinally so as to be strung. Kieft's regulation, referred to by Van Tienhoven, which was adapted on 16th April, 1641, declared that the rongh or loose sewan, worth six for a stiver, came from other places, and It was the Jlanhatan sewan which he filadat four for. a stiver, and which, wag consequently the best.