THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 175 



sympathy and co operation were invoked, "a wiser spirit" was at work 

 to make that invocation of no effect. 



While the addition of these incongruous materials was happily pre- 

 vented, it must not be forgotten that the portion of the continent which 

 was to be the soil of the Union already included within its bounds, 

 indeed in its very centre, elements equally foreign and unsuited to natu- 

 ral combination ; for almost contemporaneous with the settlement of 

 Virginia and of New England, in the first quarter of the seventeenth 

 century, Hudson's voyage had created the claim of Holland, and the 

 grant by the States General to the Dutch West India Company planted 

 their settlement along the banks of the Hudson. Thus was introduced 

 into the very heart of the land a hostile element, for England and Hol- 

 land were at strife in the East Indian commercial settlements, in which 

 regi(Mi, the massacre of the English traders, at Amboyna, occurred 

 about the same period. 



Another occupation, foreign, but less antagonistic, was that which 

 connects with American history the name of one of the wisest and 

 noblest of Europe's continental kings, statesman, and soldier, Gustavus 

 Adolphus, of Sweden ; a company of whose subjects settled, it will 

 be remembered, on the banks of the Delaware. 



Settlements such as these, by two of the great European powers, 

 and on most important sections of the continent, were un propitious to 

 any progress of union among the British colonies, for the foreign and 

 unfriendly occupation was interposed between the northern and the 

 southern settlements, an occupation held too by one of these foreign 

 powers for well nigh half a centurj^ and during all that time ambitious 

 of larger colonial dominion, and actively aggressive. 



For the removal of these impediments to our union, there was needed 

 the strong control of conquest. In one respect that process was simpli- 

 fied, as if the course of things was so guided as to leave behind as 

 little as possible of the ill blood and rankling recollections of conquest. 

 There was engendered no animosity between the Swedes and the Eng- 

 lish colonists ; lor it was Holland that did the work of conquest, and 

 subjugated the little Swedish colony on the banks of the Delaware. 



For England, there was, therefore, left only one colonial adversary ; 

 and the adverse element of a foreign occupation of a considerable and 

 important part of the continent was done away by the result of the 

 war between England and Holland ; the treaty of Breda, and the final 

 cession of the territory, thus establishing English colonial dominion in 

 uninterrupted occupation of the whole extent of the country, which was 

 thereafter to be in union. 



It would, perhaps, not be easy now to measure the sense of repug- 

 nance which survived in the minds of the conquered Dutch colonists ; 

 the natural reluctance at the transfer, by conquest, of their allegiance ; 

 the compulsory identification with a people who had other laws and 

 usages, and another language : but whatever these feelings may have 

 been, they met soon with what must have been a most unlooked for 

 alleviation in the course of events in Europe; for it was only twelve 

 years after the Dutch colonists in America passed under British do- 

 minion, that their native country, Holland, gave a sovereign to Great 

 Britain, and thus the throne of their conquerors was filled by one of 



