country must receive the main benefit from the settlements wherever made, and commerce must be made profitable. The welfare, present or prospective, of colonies or colonists, was quite a subsidiary consideration. This accounts for much of the subsequent injustice, NKW NETHERLAND.

DISCOVERY AND PRELIMINARY VIEW 7] oppression, and neglect which made life in New Netherland anything but agreeable, and finally made the people hail the conquest by Eng-land as a happy relief."1 Early in the month of May, 1623, the first shipload of permanent settlers from Holland came up Xew York Bay. They were Walloons — thirty families of them, — from the southern or Belgic provinces of the Lower Countries, which, having a strongly preponderating pro-Catholic element, had declined to join the northern Protestant prov-inces in the revolt against Spain.

These Walloons, stanch Hugue-nots in religious profession, finding life intolerable in their native land, removed, like the sturdy English dissenters, to Holland, and there gladly embraced opportunity to obtain permanent shelter from