Nor did the Bay and other colonies derive much greater honor from their diplomacy with the Dutch, one of the main results of which, indeed, was to develop such a conflict of interests among themselves as threatened to break up the Confederation. As we have already seen, it was an open question whether England or Holland had the better title to the central portion at least, of the territory claimed by the latter. As to the title of the individual settlers, English and Dutch, on the Connecticut and the Delaware, it would appear that the Dutch, who were there by the authority of their home government, were in a much better legal position than the English, who were mere squatters in the wilderness, without any patent or charter rights. The New Englanders, however, outnumbered their neighbors twenty to one, and the land in dispute was good. The advice of the British Ambassador in the States General was, therefore, acted upon with the consciousness of overwhelming force. “Crowd on,” he wrote, “crowding the Dutch out of those places they have, but without hostility or any act of violence.”[567] Steadily the advancing flood of the English overwhelmed Dutch claims. It poured westward on Long Island and along the Sound, up the Connecticut,—encircling the little fort of Good Hope,—up the Housatonic, and stopped only a few miles from New Amsterdam itself. A trading company formed in New Haven, but including capitalists from Massachusetts, tried also to plant on the Delaware in despite of both Dutch and Swedes.[568] The situation was bound to result in constant causes for disputes, grave or trifling. At the bottom of all was the desire of the English for the land, and the sense of injury and inferior numbers on the part of the Dutch. Governor Kieft touched the point, when, in reply to a letter of complaint from the United Colonies, concerning some alleged misdemeanors by the garrison of the little Dutch post at Good Hope, he wrote that “when we heare the inhabitants of Hartford complayninge of us, we seem to heare Esops wolfe complayninge of the lambe.”[569] Footnote 567: Letter from Sir William Boswell to Dr. Wright, 1642; _Conn. Col. Records_, vol. I, pp. 565 _f._ Footnote 568: For relations with the latter, _cf._ A. Johnson, _The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware_ (Univ. of Pa., 1911), vols. I, pp. 380 _ff._, and II, p. 755; _New Haven Records_, vol. I, pp. 56 _f._, 106 _f._ Footnote 569: _Acts United Colonies_, vol. I, p. 77.