University of Virginia Library

2. CHAP. II.

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 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 hollidays, 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 it is well known is astonishingly deaf to all
complaints against its governors, provided they

discharge the main duty of their station—squeezing
out a good revenue. This hint will be of importance,
to prevent my readers from being seized
with doubt and incredulity, whenever, in the course
of this authentic history, they encounter the uncommon
circumstance, of a governor, acting with
independence, and in opposition to the opinions of
the multitude.

To assist the doubtful Wouter, in the arduous
business of legislation, a board of magistrates was
appointed, which presided immediately over the
police. This potent body consisted of a schout or
bailiff, with powers between those of the present
mayor and sheriff—five burgermeesters, who were
equivalent to aldermen, and five schepens, who officiated
as scrubs, sub-devils, or bottle-holders to
the burgermeesters, in the same manner as do assistant
aldermen to their principals at the present
day; it being their duty to fill the pipes of the lordly
burgermeesters—see that they were accommodated
with spitting boxes—hunt the markets for delicacies
for corporation dinners, and to discharge such
other little offices of kindness, as were occasionally
required. It was moreover, tacitly understood,
though not specifically enjoined, that they should
consider themselves as butts for the blunt wits of
the burgermeesters, and should laugh most heartily
at all their jokes; but this last was a duty as rarely
called in action in those days, as it is at present,

and was shortly remitted, in consequence of the
tragical death of a fat little Schepen—who actually
died of suffocation in an unsuccessful effort
to force a laugh, at one of Burgermeester Van
Zandt's best jokes.

In return for these humble services, they
were permitted to say yes and no at the council
board, and to have that enviable privilege, the
run of the public kitchen—being graciously permitted
to eat, and drink, and smoke, at all those
snug junkettings and public gormandizings, for
which the ancient magistrates were equally famous
with their more modern successors. The
post of Schepen therefore, like that of assistant
alderman, was eagerly coveted by all your burghers
of a certain description, who have a huge
relish for good feeding, and a humble ambition to
be great men, in a small way—who thirst after a
little brief authority, that shall render them the
terror of the alms house, and the bridewell—that
shall enable them to lord it over obsequious poverty,
vagrant vice, outcast prostitution, and hunger
driven dishonesty—that shall place in their hands
the lesser, but galling scourge of the law, and give
to their beck a hound like pack of catchpoles and
bum bailiffs—tenfold greater rogues than the culprits
they hunt down!—My readers will excuse
this sudden warmth, which I confess is unbecoming
of a grave historian—but I have a mortal antipathy
to catchpoles, bum bailiffs, and little great men.

The ancient magistrates of this city, corresponded
with those of the present time, no less in
form, magnitude and intellect, than in prerogative
and privilege. The burgomasters, like our aldermen,
were generally chosen by weight—and not
only the weight of the body, but likewise the weight
of the head. It is a maxim practically observed in
all honest, plain thinking, regular cities, that an alderman
should be fat—and the wisdom of this can
be proved to a certainty. That the body is in some
measure an image of the mind, or rather that the
mind is moulded to the body, like melted lead to
the clay in which it is cast, has been insisted on by
many men of science, who have made human nature
their peculiar study—For as a learned gentleman
of our city observes “there is a constant relation
between the moral character of all intelligent creatures,
and their physical constitution—between their
habits and the structure of their bodies.” Thus we
see, that a lean, spare, diminutive body, is generally
accompanied by a petulant, restless, meddling mind
—either the mind wears down the body, by its continual
motion; or else the body, not affording the
mind sufficient house room, keeps it continually in
a state of fretfulness, tossing and worrying about
from the uneasiness of its situation. Whereas your
round, sleek, fat, unwieldly periphery is ever attended
by a mind, like itself, tranquil, torpid and
at ease; and we may always observe, that your

well fed, robustious burghers are in general very
tenacious of their ease and comfort; being great
enemies to noise, discord and disturbance—and
surely none are more likely to study the public
tranquillity than those who are so careful of their
own—Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or
herding together in turbulent mobs?—no—no—it
is your lean, hungry men, who are continually worrying
society, and setting the whole community by
the ears.

The divine Plato, whose doctrines are not sufficiently
attended to by philosophers of the present
age, allows to every man three souls—one, immortal
and rational, seated in the brain, that it may
overlook and regulate the body—a second consisting
of the surly and irascible passions, which
like belligerent powers lie encamped around the
heart—a third mortal and sensual, destitute of
reason, gross and brutal in its propensities, and
enchained in the belly, that it may not disturb the
divine soul, by its ravenous howlings. Now, according
to this excellent theory what can be more
clear, than that your fat alderman, is most likely
to have the most regular and well conditioned mind.
His head is like a huge, spherical chamber, containing
a prodigious mass of soft brains, whereon the
rational soul lies softly and snugly couched, as on a
feather bed; and the eyes, which are the windows
of the bed chamber, are usually half closed that its

slumberings may not be disturbed by external objects.
A mind thus comfortably lodged, and protected
from disturbance, is manifestly most likely
to perform its functions with regularity and ease.
By dint of good feeding, moreover, the mortal and
malignant soul, which is confined in the belly, and
which by its raging and roaring, puts the irritable
soul in the neighbourhood of the heart in an intolerable
passion, and thus renders men crusty and
quarrelsome when hungry, is completely pacified,
silenced and put to rest—whereupon a host of
honest good fellow qualities and kind hearted affections,
which had lain perdue, slily peeping out of
the loop holes of the heart, finding this cerberus
asleep, do pluck up their spirits, turn out one and all
in their holliday suits, and gambol up and down the
diaphragm—disposing their possessor to laughter,
good humour and a thousand friendly offices towards
his fellow mortals.

As a board of magistrates, formed on this model,
think but very little, they are the less likely to
differ and wrangle about favourite opinions—and as
they generally transact business upon a hearty dinner,
they are naturally disposed to be lenient and
indulgent in the administration of their duties.
Charlemagne was conscious of this, and therefore
(a pitiful measure, for which I can never forgive
him), ordered in his cartularies, that no judge
should hold a court of justice, except in the morning,

on an empty stomach.—A rule which, I warrant,
bore hard upon all the poor culprits in his
kingdom. The more enlightened and humane generation
of the present day, have taken an opposite
course, and have so managed that the aldermen are
the best fed men in the community; feasting lustily
on the fat things of the land, and gorging so heartily
on oysters and turtles, that in process of time they
acquire the activity of the one, and the form, the waddle,
and the green fat of the other. The consequence
is, as I have just said; these luxurious feastings do
produce such a dulcet equanimity and repose of the
soul, rational and irrational, that their transactions
are proverbial for unvarying monotony—and the
profound laws, which they enact in their dozing
moments, amid the labours of digestion, are quietly
suffered to remain as dead letters, and never enforced,
when awake. In a word your fair round-bellied
burgomaster, like a full fed mastiff, dozes
quietly at the house-door, always at home, and always
at hand to watch over its safety—but as to electing
a lean, meddling candidate to the office, as has now
and then been done, I would as leave put a greyhound,
to watch the house, or a race horse to drag
an ox waggon.

The Burgo-masters then, as I have already
mentioned, were wisely chosen by weight, and the
Schepens, or assistant aldermen, were appointed to
attend upon them, and help them eat; but the latter,

in the course of time, when they had been fed and
fattened into sufficient bulk of body and drowsiness
of brain, became very eligible candidates for the
Burgomasters' chairs, having fairly eaten themselves
into office, as a mouse eats his way into a comfortable
lodgement in a goodly, blue-nosed, skim'd
milk, New England cheese.

Nothing could equal the profound deliberations
that took place between the renowned Wouter, and
these his worthy compeers, unless it be the sage divans
of some of our modern corporations. They
would sit for hours smoking and dozing over public
affairs, without speaking a word to interrupt that
perfect stillness, so necessary to deep reflection—
faithfully observing an excellent maxim, which the
good old governor had caused to be written in letters
of gold, on the walls of the council chamber

which, being rendered into English for the benefit of
modern legislatures, means—

Under the sober way, therefore, of the renowned
Van Twiller, and the sage superintendance of
his burgomasters, the infant settlement waxed vigorous
apace, gradually emerging from the swamps
and forests, and exhibiting that mingled appearance

of town and country, customary in new cities, and
which at this day may be witnessed in the great city
of Washington; that immense metropolis, which
makes such a glorious appearance—upon paper.

Ranges of houses began to give the idea of
streets and lanes, and wherever an interval occurred,
it was over-run by a wilderness of sweet smelling
thorn apple, vulgarly called stinkweed. Amid
these fragrant bowers, the honest burghers, like so
many patriarchs of yore, sat smoking their pipes of
a sultry afternoon, inhaling the balmy odours wafted
on every gale, and listening with silent gratulation
to the clucking of their hens, the cackling of
their geese, or the sonorous gruntings of their
swine; that combination of farm-yard melody,
which may truly be said to have a silver sound, inasmuch
as it conveys a certain assurance of profitable
marketing.

The modern spectator, who wanders through
the crowded streets of this populous city, can scarce
form an idea, of the different appearance which
every object presented, in those primitive times.
The busy hum of commerce, the noise of revelry,
the rattling equipages of splendid luxury, were unknown
in the peaceful settlement of New Amsterdam.
The bleating sheep and frolicksome calves
sported about the verdant ridge, where now their
legitimate successors, the Broadway loungers, take
their morning's stroll; the cunning fox or ravenous

wolf, skulked in the woods, where now are to be
seen the dens of Gomez and his righteous fraternity
of money brokers, and flocks of vociferous
geese cackled about the field, where now the patriotic
tavern of Martling echoes with the wranglings
of the mob.[1] The whole island, at least such
parts of it as were inhabited, bloomed like a second
Eden; every dwelling had its own cabbage garden,
and that esculent vegetable, while it gave promise
of bounteous loads of sour crout, was also emblematic
of the rapid growth and regular habits of the
youthful colony.

Such are the soothing scenes presented by a fat
government. The province of the New Netherlands,
destitute of wealth, possessed a sweet tranquillity
that wealth could never purchase. It seemed
indeed as if old Saturn had again commenced
his reign, and renewed the golden days of primeval
simplicity. For the golden age, says Ovid, was
totally destitute of gold, and for that very reason
was called the golden age, that is, the happy and

fortunate age—because the evils produced by the
precious metals, such as avarice, covetuousness,
theft, rapine, usury, banking, note-shaving, lottery-insuring,
and the whole catalogue of crimes and
grievances were then unknown. In the iron age
there was abundance of gold, and on that very
account it was called the iron age, because of the
hardships, the labours, the dissentions, and the
wars, occasioned by the thirst of gold.

The genial days of Wouter Van Twiller therefore,
may truly be termed the golden age of our
city. There were neither public commotions, nor
private quarrels; neither parties, nor sects, nor
schisms; neither prosecutions, nor trials, nor punishments;
nor were there counsellors, attornies,
catch-poles or hangmen. Every man attended to
what little business he was lucky enough to have,
or neglect it if he pleased, without asking the opinion
of his neighbour.—In those days nobody meddled
with concerns above his comprehension, nor
thrust his nose into other people's affairs; nor neglected
to correct his own conduct, and reform his
own character, in his zeal to pull to pieces the
characters of others—but in a word, every respectable
citizen eat when he was not hungry, drank
when he was not thirsty, and went regularly to bed,
when the sun set, and the fowls went to roost,
whether he was sleepy or not; all which, being
agreeable to the doctrines of Malthus, tended so

remarkably to the population of the settlement, that
I am told every dutiful wife throughout New Amsterdam,
made a point of always enriching her husband
with at least one child a year, and very often
a brace—this superabundance of good things clearly
constituting the true luxury of life, according to
the favourite dutch maxim that “more than enough
constitutes a feast.” Every thing therefore went
on exactly as it should do, and in the usual words
employed by historians to express the welfare of a
country, “the profoundest tranquillity and repose
reigned throughout the province.”