THE PROVINCIAL OUTPOST OF LIBERTY BY JUDSON S. LANDON Schenectady was settled in 1662. To give to the story of the settlement its proper character among the beginnings of free institutions in America it is necessary to recall the fact that the States-General of the Netherlands in 1621 chartered a trading concern, the Dutch West India Company, granted it the monopoly of the fur trade in New Netherland, and permitted it to govern, so long as it could, whatever colonies might inhabit the territory. The company thus formed ruled over the territory from 1624 to 1664, when the English, trumping up a stale claim of prior discovery, interfered and took possession. The company’s rule was arbitrary, but not without good features. Traders are not apt to cavil over religious dogmas,—the company permitted freedom of conscience and worship. Subjects and servants render better obedience and service if treated with kindness and justice. The directors of the company seemed to know this, and professed to govern accordingly, but their governors sometimes found pretexts for the injustice which promised the surest profits. [Illustration: COLONIAL HOUSE, UNION STREET.] Some of the colonists insisted that the people ought to have a part in the government. The Dutch governor, when he most needed their support, would promise concessions. He sometimes seemed to have begun to make them, but he made none that were substantial. Why should the trading company sentence itself to death? Agriculture was necessary for the food-supply of the new province, and promised customers for the imports from Holland. Liberal terms were extended to the agriculturist. Men of wealth were tempted by offers of vast tracts of land, with a sort of feudal sovereignty, on condition that each of them would establish fifty families upon his domain. Among others the manor or lordship of Rensselaerswyck was established, embracing nearly all the territory now comprised within the counties of Albany and Rensselaer. Literally its jurisdiction was subject to that of the West India Company, but practically it was independent of it. The company established a trading and governmental post at Beverwyck or Fort Orange, now Albany, and exercised supreme jurisdiction, exclusive of that of Rensselaerswyck, for at least musket-range about the fort. Among the colonists and traders who had been attracted to Beverwyck and Rensselaerswyck were some intelligent and enterprising men, mostly Protestant Dutchmen, who, after varied experience but general good fortune in the province, resolved to go apart by themselves and establish a community where justice equality and liberty could be secured and enjoyed, free from the overlordship of a patroon, and as remote as was practicable from contact with the grasping West India Company, either at Fort Orange or Manhattan. [Illustration: VIEW ON STATE STREET.]