UPON THE Estate and Rights of the Corporation OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, AS PROPRIETORS: BY MURRAY HOFFMAN, Esq. Volume II. APPENDIX, CONTAINING NOTES AND DIAGRAMS. SECOND REVISED EDITION. NEW YORK: EDMUND JONES & CO., PRINTERS TO THE CORPORATION, No. 26 JOHN STREET. 1862. APPENDIX. NOTES. NOTE 1.-PAGE 16. Appointment of a Representative Council, in 1647.-Gov. Stuyvesant. "Whereas, we desire nothing more than that the government of New Netherlands, entrusted to our care, and principally New Amsterdam, our capital and residence, might continue and increase in good order, justice, police, population, prosperity, and mutual harmony, and be provided with strong fortifications, a church, a school and reading-place, harbor and similar necessary public edifices and improvements, for which we are desirous of obtaining the assistance of our whole community. Being unwilling, however, to vex and harass our dear subjects in any way with exactions, impositions and burthens, but rather to induce and solicit them voluntarily to assist in such honest and highly necessary work; and "Whereas, it is difficult to cover so many heads with a single cap, or to reduce so many different opinions into one, so did we, with the advice of our Council, heretofore propose to the Commonalty, that the inhabitants should nominate a double number of persons from the most notable, reasonable, honest and respectable of our subjects, from which we might select a single number of nine men, to confer with us and our Council, as their tribunes, on all means to promote the welfare of the Commonalty, as well as that of the country; wherefore a double number of our good and lawful subjects having been proposed, we with our Council did select from said nomination nine men to wit: (three from the merchants, three from the citizens, and three from the farmers, all named,) as interlocutors on behalf of the Commonalty." Then follow provisions as to their powers and duties most jealously guarded, and reserving almost entire control to the Director and Council. NOTE 2.—Page 18. Burgher-recht.-February 1, 1657. Dr. O'Callaghan (vol. 2, p. 338) says, "The exclusive right to trade was confined, almost from the beginning of the city of Amsterdam, to the Burghers. These were constituted by birth, purchase, intermarriage, or a vote of the city." Very important privileges, commercial, political, and legal, resulted from the possession of this right; which the learned author states in detail. The Burgomasters, however, pursuaded the Council to divide the Burghery into two classes, the greater and small citizens; "giving to those who should pay the sum of five hundred guilders the privilege of enrolling their names on the list of the great, who alone were to be invested with the monopoly of offices. The lessor citizenship conveyed only freedom of trade, and the privilege of being received into the respective guilds." This law was received with very little favor, and was abolished by an edict of the 25th of March, 1668. “Unfortunately for New Amsterdam, it was after the establishment of these unwise distinctions at home, that Burgher right was conferred upon her. Governor Stuyvesant divided the citizens into two castes-the great and the small burghers. The members of the Council—all burgomasters and schepens, all ministers of the gospel and officers of militia, with their descendants in the male line were enrolled in the first class, and all others could obtain the same on payment to the city treasury of fifty guilders, Holland currency." It may reasonably be concluded, that after the example of Amsterdam, the chief officers were exclusively given to the higher class. NOTE 3.-PAGE 19. Charter of Nicolls, 12th of June, 1665. This charter is set forth in the records of the Burgomasters and Schepens, of 1665. On the 14th of June, of that year, the Governer Nicolls appeared in the Assembly, and delivered to the clerk his act of revocation, dated the 12th of June, of the form of the old government of Schout, Burgomasters and Schepens; and declared that a commission should be instituted for the city government, "to consist |