from 255 to 615 florins.
But a great cargo of two or three hundred slaves which followed in the same
year reached port only in time for the vessel to be captured by the English
fleet which took possession of New Netherland and converted it into the
province of New York.[31]

[Footnote 30: The florin has a value of forty cents.]

[Footnote 31: This account is mainly drawn from A.J. Northrup, "Slavery in
New York," in the New York State Library _Report_ for 1900, pp. 246-254,
and from E.B. O'Callaghan ed., _Voyages of the Slavers St. John and Arms of
Amsterdam, with additional papers illustrative of the slave trade under the
Dutch_ (Albany, 1867), pp. 99-213.]

The change of the flag was very slow in bringing any pronounced change in
the colony's general regime. The Duke of York's government was autocratic
and pro-slavery and the inhabitants, though for some decades they bought
few slaves, were nothing averse to the institution. After the colony was
converted into a royal province by the accession of James II to the English
throne popular self-government was gradually introduced and a light import
duty was laid upon slaves. But increasing prosperity caused the rise of
slave importations to an average of about one hundred a year in the first
quarter of the eighteenth century;[32] and in spite of the rapid increase
of the whites during the rest of the colonial period the proportion of the
negroes was steadily maintained at about one-seventh of the whole. They
became fairly numerous in all districts except the extreme frontier, but in
the counties fronting New York Harbor their ratio was somewhat above the
average.[33] In 1755 a special census was taken of slaves older than
fourteen years, and a large part of its detailed returns has been
preserved. These reports from some two-score scattered localities enumerate
2456 slaves, about one-third of the total negro population of the
specified age; and they yield unusually definite data as to the scale of
slaveholdings. Lewis Morris of Morrisania had twenty-nine slaves above
fourteen years old; Peter DeLancy of Westchester Borough had twelve; and
the following had ten each: Thomas Dongan of Staten Island, Martinus
Hoffman of Dutchess County, David Jones of Oyster Bay, Rutgert Van Brunt of
New Utrecht, and Isaac Willett of Westchester Borough. Seventy-two others
had from five to nine each, and 1048 had still smaller holdings.[34] The
average quota was two slaves of working age, a