"They seem to have visited the Dutch," writes Mr.
Brodhead, "as inquisitors, to collect evidence criminating the Dutch and to collect no other evidence.

And, with peculiar assurance, they saw no impropriety in requiring the authorities of New Netherland, in their own capital, to suspend their established rules of law in favor of those of New England." Governor Stuyvesant repressed every expression of impatience, and urged the most friendly overtures.

It may be said that it was manifestly for his interest to do so, for the Dutch colonies were quite powerless compared with the united colonies of New England.

The New England agents ungraciously repelled his advances, and at length abruptly terminated the conference without giving the governor an opportunity to prove his innocence.

At nine o'clock in the evening they suddenly took leave of New Amsterdam, declining the most friendly invitations to remain, and "cloaking their sudden departure under pretence of the day of election to be held this week at Boston." They left behind them the following menace: "The Commissioners conclude their negotiation by declaring that if you shall offer any injury to any of the English in these parts, whether by yourselves or by the Indians, either upon the national quarrel, or by reason of any differences depending between the United English Colonies and yourselves, that, as the Commissioners will do no wrong, so they may not suffer their countrymen to be oppressed upon any such account." The morning after this unfriendly retirement of the agents, Governor Stuyvesant dispatched a messenger to Boston, with a letter containing a very full reply to the grievances of which the New England colonists complained.