IN order to present the aforesaid answer succinctly, he, Van Tienhoven, will allege not only that it ill becomes the aforesaid Van her Donk and other private persons to assail and abuse the administration of the Managers in this country, and that of their Governors there,(1) in such harsh and general terms, but that they would much better discharge their duty if they were first to bring 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 half a fault to be reckoned for a whole one.
And, as it does not concern the inhabitants what instructions or orders the patroon gives to his chief agent, the charge is made for the purpose of making trouble. For these people would like to live without being subject to any one's censure or discipline, which, however, they stand doubly in need of.
Again it is said in general terms, but wherein, should be specified and proven, that the Director exercises and has usurped sovereign power.
That the inhabitants have had need of the Directors appears by the books of accounts, in which it can be seen that the Company has assisted all the freemen (some few excepted) with clothing, provisions and other things, and in the erection of houses, and this at the rate of fifty per cent. advance above the actual cost in the Fatherland, which is not yet paid. And they would gladly, by means of complaints, drive the Company from the land, and pay nothing.