And, treading in its steps, New Netherlands became the asylum and chosen home of the oppressed, the persecuted and the enterprising of every European nation. Jews and Christians all crowded over, all were united to help in building up the colony; and troops of orphans, made so by war and persecution, were shipped to the New World; and “a free passage was offered to mechanics, farmers and labourers, foreigners and exiles—men inured to toil and penury.” New York was even then laying its cosmopolitan foundations; “its settlers were relics of the first-fruits of the Reformation, from the Belgic provinces, from England, from France; Protestants who had escaped from the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s-eve, from Bohemia, from Germany and Switzerland, from Piedmont and the Italian Alps.”[4] Even Africa had her representatives in this home of all people, though her sons were not there by their own voluntary choice. Among the other commercial speculations of the West India company was the traffic in slaves; they had their trading stations on the coast of Guinea, whence cargoes of negroes were shipped to Manhattan. Stuyvesant was required by his employers to advance the sale of negro slaves as much as lay in his power; these slaves were sold at public auctions, the average price being about £12 per man. When the demand was not great at Manhattan, they were sent on to the puritan colonies. Slaves who continued the property of the company were, after a certain time of bondage, settled on small farms, for which they paid a stipulated amount of produce. “The colony increased,” says Bancroft; “the villages were full of children; the new year and the month of May were welcomed in with merry frolics; New Netherlands was not an ascetic colony, like those of New England; May-poles and dancing were allowed; the vine and the mulberry were cultivated; the whale was pursued off the coast; flocks and herds multiplied, and the tile, so long imported from Holland, began to be manufactured near Fort Orange. New Amsterdam could, in a few years, boast of stately buildings, and vied with Boston. ‘This happily situated province,’ said its inhabitants, ‘may become the granary of our fatherland; by God’s blessing we shall in a few years become a mighty people.’” With all these new elements of vitality, a bolder and freer spirit had entered the colony. The people demanded a share of political power. They were infected by the liberties of New England, and nothing less would satisfy them. They assembled, and a petition, drawn up by George Baxter, was presented by their delegates, requiring “that no laws should be enacted without the consent of the people; that none should be appointed to office but with the approbation of the people.”