e Company, carrying out its wishes in
opposition to popular reform. They therefore wrote to him, stating
that the requirement was in violation of their charter, and requesting
him "not to be in too much haste to commence his voyage, but to delay
it until the receipt of further orders."

It so happened, however, that then the States-General were just on the
eve of hostilities with England. It was a matter of the first
importance that New Netherland should be under the rule of a governor
of military experience, courage and energy. No man could excel
Stuyvesant in these qualities. Yielding to the force of circumstances,
the States-General revoked their recall. Thus narrowly Stuyvesant
escaped the threatened humiliation.

The English government was angry with Holland for refusing to expel
the royalist refugees, who, after the execution of Charles I., had
taken refuge in Holland. The commerce of the Dutch Republic then
covered every sea. England, to punish the Dutch and to revive her own
decaying commerce, issued, by Parliamentary vote, her famous "Act of
Navigation," which was exultantly proclaimed at the old London
Exchange "with sound of trumpet and beat of drum."

This Act decreed that no production of Asia, Africa or America should
be brought to England, except in English vessels, manned by English
crews, and that no productions of Europe should be brought to England,
unless in English vessels, or in those of the country in which the
imported cargoes were produced. These measures were considered very
unjust by all the other nations, and especially by the Dutch, then the
most commercial nation on the globe.

The States-General sent ambassadors to London to remonstrate against
such hostile action; and at the same time orders were issued for the
equipment of one hundred and fifty ships of war. The States-General
had not yet ratified Stuyvesant's treaty of Hartford. The ambassadors
were instructed to urge that an immovable boundary line should be
established between the Dutch and English possessions in America.

The reply of the English Government was not conciliatory. The English,
it was said, had always been forbidden to trade in the Dutch colonies.
The Dutch ought therefore to find no fault with the recent Navigation
Act, from which measure the Council did not "deem it fitting to
recede." As to the colonial boundary, the ungracious reply was
returned,

"The English were the first settlers in North America, fr