When he was ready to take that step, he allowed no popular election of the officials, but appointed the two burgomasters and five schepens and directed that the Company's sheriff should act as schout for the city.[1] In 1654[2] and 1656[3] the burgomasters and schepens of New Amsterdam petitioned for the privilege of nominating a double number of candidates as their successors. In January of the latter year, Stuyvesant agreed to such a double nomination upon the condition that the acting magistrates should always be considered as in nomination; that the nominees should be well qualified persons, favorable to the Director and Council; and that a member of the Council should be present at the meeting when the burgomasters and schepens made the nominations.[4] Under this arrangement the local officials were annually elected until the coming of the English.
Here again the influence of the Holland customs is seen. In the Middle Ages the towns and cities of the Low Countries had acquired democratic governments, but by the seventeenth century these had been gradually undermined by aristocratic classes. Popular elections had given way to close corporations and systems of double or triple nomination.[5] And these were the institutions which were now established in New Amsterdam. There was no popular election, but the outgoing magistrates nominated a double number for their successors ; and even this nomination was not free, for a member of the Director's council must be present at the election. Shortly after this, the Director introduced another of the features of Dutch conservatism, in the establishment of a greater and a lesser "burgerregt." The greater burgerregt was held by those who had held, or whose ancestors had held high civil, military or ecclesiastical offices in the city, or who had purchased the right for fifty guilders. The second class, holding the lesser burgerregt, was composed of all born in the city, or who had been resident and kept fire and light for a year and a half, or who kept shop and paid twenty guilders.[6] Only those who possessed the greater burgerregt were eligible to the municipal offices. Thus the government of New Amsterdam was based upon the aristocratic and hereditary features of the constitution of old Amsterdam. There was no place in this scheme for popular government. It provided for a selection
- ↑ O'Callaghan, II. 212-216 ; Brodhead, I. 54S-549.
- ↑ N. Y. Col. Doc, XIV. 244.
- ↑ O'Callaghan, II. 311.
- ↑ Records of New Amsterdam, II. 16, 24-29, 282-286 ; O'Callaghan, II. 370. A separate schout for New Amsterdam was not appointed until 1660.
- ↑ J. F. Jameson, Mag. Amer. Hist., VIII. 321.
- ↑ Laws and Ordinances of New Netherland, 299-301.
