[E.B. O'Callaghan (ed.) (1856)] As a consequence, emigration was encouraged, the colonists were admitted to participate in the foreign trade, and a municipal government was conceded for the first time to New Amsterdam, now New-York. In the labors attendant on procuring these reforms. Van der Donck could not fail to secure the ill will of the Company, which had taken possession of New Netherland merely for commercial purposes, and had made colonization only a secondary object. Accordingly, in 1652, when his business w.as concluded and he was on the eve of returning to this country, with his family, the Directors at Amsterdam instructed their ship captains not to receive him on board any of their vessels. In vain he procured *he interference of influential friends and represented the cruelty of separating him from his wife and children, who had already embarked; in vain he pleaded the ruin that would overtake him were he not permitted to proceed.