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, explored the northern waters,t 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.t 
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 
colomes 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 Ib. t Ib. § Ib. li Ip. 
