.

Act XVI. establishes free trade: "Whereas, the restriction of trade hath
appeared to be the greatest impediment to the advance of the estimation
and value of our present only commodity, tobacco, _be it enacted and
confirmed_, That the Dutch, and all strangers of what Christian nation
soever, in amity with the people of England, shall have free liberty to
trade with us for all allowable commodities." And it was provided, "That
if the said Dutch, or other foreigners, shall import any negro slaves,
they, the said Dutch, or others, shall, for the tobacco really produced
by the sale of the said negro, pay only the impost of two shillings per
hogshead, the like being paid by our own nation." The regular impost
being ten shillings, this exemption was a bounty of eight shillings per
hogshead for the encouragement of the importation of negroes.[245:B]

When Argall, in 1614, returning from his half-piratical excursion
against the French at Port Royal, entered what is now New York Bay, he
found three or four huts erected there by Dutch mariners and fishermen,
on the Island of Manhattan. Near half a century had since elapsed, and
the colony planted there had grown to an importance that justified
something of diplomatic correspondence. In the spring of 1660 Nicholas
Varleth and Brian Newton were sent by Governor Stuyvesant, celebrated by
Knickerbocker, from Fort Amsterdam to Virginia, for the purpose of
forming a league acknowledging the Dutch title to New York. Sir William
Berkley evaded the proposition in the following letter:--

"SIR,--I have received the letter you were pleased to send me
by Mr. Mills his vessel, and shall be ever ready to comply
with you in all acts of neighborly friendship and amity; but
truly, sir, you desire me to do that concerning your letter
and claims to land in the northern part of America which I am
incapable to do, for I am but a servant of the assembly's;
neither do they arrogate any power to themselves further than
the miserable distractions of England force them to. For when
God shall be pleased in His mercy to take away and dissipate
the unnatural divisions of their native country, they will
immediately return to their own professed obedience. What then
they should do in matters of contract, donation, and
confession of right, would have little strength or
signification; much more presumptive and impertinent would it
b