CHAPTER II.
Containing some account of the grand council of
New Amsterdam; as also divers especial good
philosophical reasons why an alderman should
be fat—with other particulars touching the state
of the province.
In treating of the early governors of
the province, I must caution my readers
against confounding them, in point of
dignity and power, with those worthy
gentlemen, who are whimsically denominated
governors in this enlightened republic—a
set of unhappy victims of
popularity, who are in fact the most
dependent, hen-pecked beings in the
community: doomed to bear the secret
goadings and corrections of their own
party, and the sneers and revilings of the
whole world beside.—Set up, like geese
at Christmas holidays, to be pelted and
shot at by every whipster and vagabond
in the land. On the contrary, the
Dutch governors enjoyed that uncontrolled
authority, vested in all commanders
of distant colonies or territories.
They were in a manner absolute despots
in their little domains, lording it, if so
disposed, over both law and gospel, and
accountable to none but the mother
country; which
