We are more intimately concerned with the election of officers than with their powers. The charter of Brooklyn[1] of 1646 shows that the earliest magistrates of that village were elected by those interested in the lands of the town. The same method of electing the first magistrates was adopted in New Haarlem in 1658,[2] and in Bushwick in 1661.[3] In the latter case the inhabitants asked Stuyvesant for lands and political privileges, and were directed to select six persons from whom the Director might select three as magistrates. In other cases, however, the first schepens seem not to have been elected by the people, but to have been named in the charter itself This was true of the charters of Wiltwyck,[4] Bergen,[5] and Staten Island.[6]
The popular suffrage thus sometimes allowed to the Dutch settlers in the choice of their first magistrates under the town charters, was not continued in subsequent elections. In all cases which I have been able to find, a two-fold restriction was placed upon the towns. First, the magistrates, when changed, were to be elected by the Director and Council at New Amsterdam from a double number of candidates presented to them; and secondly, this nomination was made not by the townspeople, but by the magistrates already in office. A few citations from the many instances in the records will illustrate these restrictions.
In April, 1655, the magistrates of Brooklyn petitioned the Director and Council to be permitted to send in a double number of candidates for new magistrates. The Council in reply directed the magistrates to inform them, "as far as it is in their power, of the character, manners, and expertness of the most respectable individuals of their village and places in its vicinity under their jurisdiction." The magistrates accordingly sent in nominations, from which the Director and Council selected three to act as schepens for the future.[7] In all this transaction there is no mention made of popular election; the magistrates now, instead of the people, make the nominations to the Director and his Council. The Wiltwyck charter contained the provision:
