[E.B. O'Callaghan (ed.) (1856)] government of the Colonies, presumed to have been condensed within the cranium of his right honorable lordship. GENERAL INTRODUCTION. XV "The further usefulness of the author to this Province and to posterity, it might be added, was prematurely arrested by his refusal to renounce his allegiance to the Crown at the most critical juncture of our history — his confinement at the ' Livingston Manor' — his transportation to New-York by General Washington, and his subsequent shipment to the land of his birth and of his choice. "From the Dutch history of 'New Netherland,' a pamphlet published at Amsterdam, may, in like manner, be gathered the fruitful events of our Provincial history up to the time of that elaborate work, eschewing, always, the veritable Knickerbocker. " From a notice of these particulars, it is submitted, by your committee, whether the history of the State of New-York ought not to rest on higher and safer authority than that referred to, and whether it should not be written by one of her own citizens possessed of the materials, to be derived from the sources before mentioned, and from the researches and under the supervision of the State Historical Society. "During the period from 1609, when our shores were first discovered and our noble river ascended by Henry Hudson, to 1614, and while as a Dutch Colony, up to 1664, and subsequently as an English Colony, from that date to 1776, it was well known that the most