Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 4.djvu/145

A.D. 1699.] York in October, more like skeletons than living men. On the 13th of November Paterson and his companions reached England in the Caledonia. The indignation of the Scotch at their treatment was beyond bounds, and the more so because, unacquainted with the real facts of the case, they had sent out a second expedition of one thousand three hundred men.

The history of this second expedition was as miserable as that of the first. On arriving, the new adventurers, instead of a flourishing colony, found the place deserted, and only a few miserable Indians to tell them the fate of their predecessors. With this new arrival came four Presbyterian clergymen, who assumed the command and seemed to think of nothing but establishing a presbytery in all its rigour and uncharitableness. Paterson, like Penn in Pennsylvania and lord Baltimore in Baltimore, had proclaimed perfect civil and religious liberty to men of all creeds and nations. This was now reversed: there was nothing but the most harsh and senseless phariseeism. They quarrelled with gentlemen who were not of their creed, and, says Dalrymple, "they exhausted the spirits of the people by requiring their attendance at sermon four or five hours at a stretch, relieving each other by preaching alternately, but allowing no relief to their hearers. Wednesday they divided into three parts—thanksgiving, humiliation, and supplication, in which these ministers followed each other. And as the service of the Church of Scotland consists of a lecture with a comment, sermon, two prayers, three psalms, and a blessing, the work of that day, upon an average of the length of the service of that age, could not take up less than twelve hours, during which space of time the colony was collected and kept close together in the guard room, which was used as a church, in a tropical climate, and in a sickly season. They demanded, besides this, of the council, to set apart a day for a solemn fasting and humiliation, &c." Instead of a comfort, these men proved one of the worst curses of this unfortunate colony, thwarting and damping the exertions of the people, and continually threatening the poor people with hell fire. Two of these ministers perished.

In the midst of these miseries arrived Captain Campbell of Ferrol, with a force of his own men. He attacked and dispersed a body of one thousand Spaniards, sent against him, but this was only a fresh offence against Spain, and, therefore, against king William. They were soon, however, assailed by a more powerful Spanish squadron. Campbell got away to New York, the rest of the colony capitulated, and there was an end of the unhappy expedition to Darien. The Spaniards humanely allowed the remnant of this wretched company to embark in one of their vessels, the Rising Sun; but as the British authorities at all the islands refused them any succour or stores whatever, only eighty of them arrived alive in England.

Scotland was in a frenzy of indignation at this cold-blooded conduct of the king, who, if he had visited the projectors with severity, ought to have had some compassion for the poor deluded sufferers. The exasperated Scots called on the king to withdraw his proclamation against a company which had an undoubted right by charter to trade to the West Indies, if not to the mainland. They demanded that the Scottish parliament should be summoned, but William only sent evasive answers, and the fury of the people rose to that height that nothing was talked of but that the king had forfeited his right to the allegiance of Scotland by his conduct, and of a war with England.

When William returned from Holland, in the autumn of 1699, he found this tempest of indignation raging against him in Scotland. Events on the continent soon caused him to repent of his callous treatment of this scheme of colonisation, and as we have said, when it was too late, he sent for Paterson to discuss the practicability of still carrying it out. Paterson, though he had sunk his fortune in it, was still as zealous for it as ever. His plan for reviving the colony of Darien may be seen in Sir John Dalrymple's "Memoirs." He proposed to give four-fifths of the interest in it to England; and in 1701, when William determined to strike a blow at the fame of Louis in South America, he gave Paterson assurances of his support. It was too late. Mr. Saxe Bannister has recently thrown the true light on the character and aims of Paterson, in a life of his drawn from the public documents in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, in the Bodleian, at Guildhall, and various other sources. In this work he has amply shown that Paterson was far before his time in his perception of the principles of free trade, or sound morality in all mercantile and political schemes; and in his ideas of religious toleration. His scheme of a Council of Trade embraces a wonderful circle of suggestions for the effectual promotion of our commerce, for the management of our poor laws, for the purchasing and warehousing of corn by government to secure it at a reasonable rate for the supply of our poor, for regulating the home and foreign trade, for encouraging the fisheries, for a board of works, including the best maintenance of highways, streets, bridges, harbours, docks, &c., for punishing thieves by making them labour in favour of the parties robbed, for the lenient yet salutary treatment of debtors and bankrupts, for regulating the coinage and equalising all weights and measures, and for reducing all important import duties to one per cent. The plans of Paterson still deserve the serious attention of political reformers. He urged on William the benefits of a union with Scotland, and gave him a plan for effectually preventing embezzlement and neglect in the public offices, as well as for a sinking fund. In 1715 he was granted, by act of parliament, eighteen thousand two hundred and forty-one pounds ten shillings and ten pence, in consideration of his losses by the Darien Company. His last days were spent in resisting the various paper schemes of John Law.

Meantime the partition treaty had become known to the court at Madrid, and William's meddling in it excited great indignation. At the same time the agents of Louis had prevailed on the failing king to nominate the electoral prince of Bavaria his heir to the crown. Scarcely, however, was this done when this young prince died, being only eight years of age. Louis still kept up the farce of disinterestedness, and persuaded William to enter into a second treaty, settling the crown of Spain on the archduke Charles, son of the emperor, but leaving the Italian states to the dauphin. Again were William, Portland, and Tallard, with an agent of the emperor, busy on the new partition at Loo. But whilst they were busy there, the French ambassador was equally busy at Madrid, inflaming the mind of the weak and