CHAPTER XIV

CONSTITUTIONAL   AND   LEGAL   HISTORY   OF   NEW-YORK   IN   THE

SEVENTEENTH   CENTURY

EW States present in a period as brief so many political
changes as our own. Settled secondarily by one body of
f^fe^^^^ the Teutonic stocli, it was soon transferred as a result of
rM^/JjvSI warfare to another people of like origin, but possessed
of widely different institutions. In course of time the stronger peo¬
ple abrogated the political and legal institutions of those they had
conquered; but this result was accomplished consistently with the
forms of law. The constitution and laws which grew up among a
people thus blended by conquest have, in turn, been subjected to
many modifications, attributable                       ^                           ^

to dynastic influences, to political    /^/C^^^/^'"^^ /^Z^   ^C^^^y^^^^ :
revolutions, to legislation, or to   ^                                       ^

the subtler and less majestic forces referable to a voluntary and ex¬
tended immigration into this territory of persons of widely different
origin. Of such extensive causes any outline can be only suggestive.
A portion of the territory now embraced in this great and splendid
modern State was occupied under feeble Dutch auspices about the
year 1614, a ship bearing the Dutch flag having discovered the Hud¬
son River in 1609. Prior to the incorporation of the Dutch West
India Company in 1621, under the Stadholderate of Prince IMaurice
of Orange-Nassau, who was actively interested in its establishment,
the settlements in New Netherland consisted of one or two fortified
trading stations, the commandants of which exercised the necessary
civil jurisdiction under trading licenses or charters. In 1626 the
Dutch first established a rudimentary but adequate form of govern¬
ment for New Netherland, the nature and extent of which com¬
prehend the first phase of our subject; for by assumptions of our
jurisprudents the rights and title of the aboriginal inhabitants of this
territory are substantially ignored, or do not figure in the juris¬
prudence of the modern State—the aborigines being said by jurists to
have had no government recognizable by the law of nations and no
institutions compatible with our standard of civilization.    Curiously