Document: Ordinance|Director General and Council to prevent fraud of the excise by brewers and tappers

The Director General and Council of New Netherland to All, who shall see these presents or hear them read, Greeting!
WHEREAS we notice and see, that former ordinances issued against the defraudations and smuggling, practised with beer, which tavernkeepers and tapsters sell are not observed; also that contrary to our previous orders some few inhabitants make it a business to tap and brew the same, thereby not only defrauding the excise farmer but also injuring other tapsters, who make it their only business,—Therefore conform to the general rule of the Fatherland and wishing to remedy the evil, We hereby command and order, that no inhabitant, who makes it a business to brew, shall be allowed to tap, sell or give away beer, wine or strong water by the small measure, excepting at meal times, not even to tableboarders, whom they may pretend to board, under which pretext we have seen many frauds perpetrated. To prevent one and the other, we also order, that henceforth no beer or wine shall be removed from any brewery, cellar or warehouse nor moved in the houses of the tapsters nor brought into them, unless it is previously reported to the Secretary and his carriers or porters have obtained a certificate of the report, signed by the Secretary's first clerk, which shall be exhibited and shown, on the same day as procured, to our Fiscal Hendrick van Dyck or whoever in his absence may serve in his place. We warn all brewers, not to deliver any beer to any carrier, porter or tapster, until a certificate of delivery is first produced by them under penalty of forfeiting beer and wine and all chattels, be they horses, sledge or anything else, used in moving the former and arbitrary correction for all, who lend a hand thereto.
Thus done etc., November 8, 1649. Signed: P. Stuyvesant, L. van Dincklagen, H. van Dyck, La Montagne, Brian Nuton.