4 INTRODUCTION. 



civil cases, and in litigated cases may render judgments not exceeding one 

 hundred dollars. Three justices constitute a court of special sessions for the trial 

 of small offences. Equity is administered by a chancellor and by nine subordinate 

 vice-chancellors, of whom six are also circuit judges. The chancellor and circuit 

 judges respectively hold their offices until the age of sixty years. All judicial 

 officers, except justices of the peace in towns, are nominated by the governor, 

 and appointed by him with the advice and consent of the senate. He also ap- 

 points in like manner major-generals, inspectors of brigades, and officers of the 

 general staff of the militia, except the commissary-general. The constitution 

 may be amended ; and for that purpose a resolution must be passed by a majority 

 of the legislature at one session, and at a succeeding session by the votes of two- 

 thirds of all the members elected, and be approved at the next general election 

 by a majority of the people. The present constitution was established in the 

 place of one which had been adopted in 1777. 



The Bay of New- York is supposed to have been visited by Verazzani, under 

 the patronage of Francis I. of France, in 1584.* In 1609, Champlain, a mariner 

 in the French service, exjilored the northern waters,f and Hendrick Hudson, 

 under a commission from the States General of the Netherlands, ascended the 

 river whose name so justly commemorates the enterprise of that navigator.J 

 The settlement of the southern portion of the state, under the name of New- 

 Netherlands, was commenced in the subsequent year. The colony submitted 

 to the English in 1664,§ and was regained by the Netherlands in 1673,|| but was 

 relinquished to England by the treaty of Westminster in the succeeding year, 

 and remained a province of the British empire until the thirteen united British 

 colonies became an independent confederacy of states in 1776. During the 

 Dutch supremacy, the province was a mercantile possession of the Dutch East 

 India Company. Under the English, it was by royal charter a manor belonging 

 to the Duke of York. In 1683, the discontent of the colonists induced the con- 



* Bancroft. t Id. j Id. § Id. II Id. 



