The address was presented by the whole House. William's answer was as

good as it was possible for him, in the unfortunate position in which he

had placed himself, to return. It showed that he was deeply hurt; but it

was temperate and dignified. Those who saw him in private knew that his

feelings had been cruelly lacerated. His body sympathised with his mind.

His sleep was broken. His headaches tormented him more than ever. From

those whom he had been in the habit of considering as his friends, and

who had failed him in the recent struggle, he did not attempt to conceal

his displeasure. The lucrative see of Worcester was vacant; and some

powerful Whigs of the cider country wished to obtain it for John

Hall, Bishop of Bristol. One of the Foleys, a family zealous for the

Revolution, but hostile to standing armies, spoke to the King on the

subject. "I will pay as much respect to your wishes," said William, "as

you and yours have paid to mine." Lloyd of St. Asaph was translated to

Worcester.

The Dutch Guards immediately began to march to the coast. After all the

clamour which had been raised against them, the populace witnessed

their departure rather with sorrow than with triumph. They had been long

domiciled here; they had been honest and inoffensive; and many of them

were accompanied by English wives and by young children who talked no

language but English. As they traversed the capital, not a single shout

of exultation was raised; and they were almost everywhere greeted with

kindness. One rude spectator, indeed, was heard to remark that Hans made

a much better figure, now that he had been living ten years on the fat

of the land, than when he first came. "A pretty figure you would have

made," said a Dutch soldier, "if we had not come." And the retort was

generally applauded. It would not, however, be reasonable to infer from

the signs of public sympathy and good will with which the foreigners

were dismissed that the nation wished them to remain. It was probably

because they were going that they were regarded with favour by many who

would never have seen them relieve guard at St. James's without black

looks and muttered curses.

Side by side with the discussion about the land force had been

proceeding a discussion, scarcely less animated, about the naval

administration. The chief minister of marine was a man whom it had once

been useless and even perilous to attack in the Commons. It was to no

purpose that, in 1693, grave charges, resting on grave evidence, had

been brought against the Russell who had conquered at La Hogue. The name

of Russell acted as a spell on all who loved English freedom. The name

of La Hogue acted as a spell on all who were proud of the glory of

the English arms. The accusations, unexamined and unrefuted, were

contemptuously flung aside; and the thanks of the House were voted

to the accused commander without one dissentient voice. But times had

changed. The Admiral still had zealous partisans; but the fame of his

exploits had lost their gloss; people in general were quick to discern

his faults; and his faults were but too discernible. That he had carried

on a traitorous correspondence with Saint Germains had not been proved,

and had been pronounced by the representatives of the people to be

a foul calumny. Yet the imputation had left a stain on his name. His

arrogant, insolent and quarrelsome temper made him an object of hatred.

His vast and growing wealth made him an object of envy. What his

official merits and demerits really were it is not easy to discover

through the mist made up of factious abuse and factious panegyric. One

set of writers described him as the most ravenous of all the plunderers

of the poor overtaxed nation. Another set asserted that under him the

ships were better built and rigged, the crews were better disciplined

and better tempered, the biscuit was better, the beer was better, the

slops were better, than under any of his predecessors; and yet that the

charge to the public was less than it had been when the vessels were

unseaworthy, when the sailors were riotous, when the food was alive with

vermin, when the drink tasted like tanpickle, and when the clothes

and hammocks were rotten. It may, however, be observed that these two

representations are not inconsistent with each other; and there is

strong reason to believe that both are, to a great extent, true. Orford

was covetous and unprincipled; but he had great professional skill and

knowledge, great industry, and a strong will. He was therefore an useful

servant of the state when the interests of the state were not opposed to

his own; and this was more than could be said of some who had preceded

him. He was, for example, an incomparably better administrator than

Torrington. For Torrington's weakness and negligence caused ten times as

much mischief as his rapacity. But, when Orford had nothing to gain

by doing what was wrong, he did what was right, and did it ably and

diligently. Whatever Torrington did not embezzle he wasted. Orford may

have embezzled as much as Torrington; but he wasted nothing.

Early in the session, the House of Commons resolved itself into a

Committee on the state of the Navy. This Committee sate at intervals

during more than three months. Orford's administration underwent a

close scrutiny, and very narrowly escaped a severe censure. A resolution

condemning the manner in which his accounts had been kept was lost by

only one vote. There were a hundred and forty against him, and a hundred

and forty-one for him. When the report was presented to the House,

another attempt was made to put a stigma upon him. It was moved that the

King should be requested to place the direction of maritime affairs

in other hands. There were a hundred and sixty Ayes to a hundred and

sixty-four Noes. With this victory, a victory hardly to be distinguished

from a defeat, his friends were forced to be content. An address setting

forth some of the abuses in the naval department, and beseeching King

William to correct them, was voted without a division. In one of those

abuses Orford was deeply interested. He was First Lord of the Admiralty;

and he had held, ever since the Revolution, the lucrative place of

Treasurer of the Navy. It was evidently improper that two offices, one

of which was meant to be a check on the other, should be united in the

same person; and this the Commons represented to the King.

Questions relating to the military and naval Establishments occupied

the attention of the Commons so much during the session that, until the

prorogation was at hand, little was said about the resumption of the

Crown grants. But, just before the Land Tax Bill was sent up to the

Lords, a clause was added to it by which seven Commissioners were

empowered to take account of the property forfeited in Ireland during

the late troubles. The selection of those Commissioners the House

reserved to itself. Every member was directed to bring a list containing

the names of seven persons who were not members; and the seven names

which appeared in the greatest number of lists were inserted in the

bill. The result of the ballot was unfavourable to the government. Four

of the seven on whom the choice fell were connected with the opposition;

and one of them, Trenchard, was the most conspicuous of the pamphleteers

who had been during many months employed in raising a cry against the

army.

The Land Tax Bill, with this clause tacked to it, was carried to the

Upper House. The Peers complained, and not without reason, of this mode

of proceeding. It may, they said, be very proper that Commissioners

should be appointed by Act of Parliament to take account of the

forfeited property in Ireland. But they should be appointed by a

separate Act. Then we should be able to make amendments, to ask for

conferences, to give and receive explanations. The Land Tax Bill we

cannot amend. We may indeed reject it; but we cannot reject it without

shaking public credit, without leaving the kingdom defenceless, without

raising a mutiny in the navy. The Lords yielded, but not without a

protest which was signed by some strong Whigs and some strong Tories.

The King was even more displeased than the Peers. "This Commission," he

said, in one of his private letters, "will give plenty of trouble next

winter." It did indeed give more trouble than he at all anticipated, and

brought the nation nearer than it has ever since been to the verge of

another revolution.

And now the supplies had been voted. The spring was brightening and

blooming into summer. The lords and squires were sick of London; and

the King was sick of England. On the fourth day of May he prorogued the

Houses with a speech very different from the speeches with which he had

been in the habit of dismissing the preceding Parliament. He uttered not

one word of thanks or praise. He expressed a hope that, when they should

meet again, they would make effectual provision for the public safety.

"I wish," these were his concluding words, "no mischief may happen in

the mean time." The gentlemen who thronged the bar withdrew in wrath,

and, as they could not take immediate vengeance, laid up his reproaches

in their hearts against the beginning of the next session.

The Houses had broken up; but there was still much to be done before the

King could set out for Loo. He did not yet perceive that the true way

to escape from his difficulties was to form an entirely new ministry

possessing the confidence of the majority which had, in the late

session, been found so unmanageable. But some partial changes he could

not help making. The recent votes of the Commons forced him seriously

to consider the state of the Board of Admiralty. It was impossible that

Orford could continue to preside at that Board and be at the same time

Treasurer of the Navy. He was offered his option. His own wish was to

keep the Treasurership, which was both the more lucrative and the more

secure of his two places. But it was so strongly represented to him that

he would disgrace himself by giving up great power for the sake of gains

which, rich and childless as he was, ought to have been beneath his

consideration, that he determined to remain at the Admiralty. He seems

to have thought that the sacrifice which he had made entitled him to

govern despotically the department at which he had been persuaded to

remain. But he soon found that the King was determined to keep in his

own hands the power of appointing and removing the junior Lords. One of

these Lords, especially, the First Commissioner hated, and was bent on

ejecting, Sir George Rooke, who was Member of Parliament for Portsmouth.

Rooke was a brave and skilful officer, and had, therefore, though a Tory

in politics, been suffered to keep his place during the ascendency of

the Whig junto. Orford now complained to the King that Rooke had been

in correspondence with the factious opposition which had given so

much trouble, and had lent the weight of his professional and official

authority to the accusations which had been brought against the naval

administration. The King spoke to Rooke, who declared that Orford had

been misinformed. "I have a great respect for my Lord; and on proper

occasions I have not failed to express it in public. There have

certainly been abuses at the Admiralty which I am unable to defend. When

those abuses have been the subject of debate in the House of Commons, I

have sate silent. But, whenever any personal attack has been made on

my Lord, I have done him the best service that I could." William was

satisfied, and thought that Orford should have been satisfied too.

But that haughty and perverse nature could be content with nothing but

absolute dominion. He tendered his resignation, and could not be induced

to retract it. He said that he could be of no use. It would be easy to

supply his place; and his successors should have his best wishes. He

then retired to the country, where, as was reported and may easily be

believed, he vented his ill humour in furious invectives against the

King. The Treasurership of the Navy was given to the Speaker Littleton.

The Earl of Bridgewater, a nobleman of very fair character and of some

experience in business, became First Lord of the Admiralty.

Other changes were made at the same time. There had during some time

been really no Lord President of the Council. Leeds, indeed, was still

called Lord President, and, as such, took precedence of dukes of older

creation; but he had not performed any of the duties of his office since

the prosecution instituted against him by the Commons in 1695 had been

suddenly stopped by an event which made the evidence of his guilt at

once legally defective and morally complete. It seems strange that a

statesman of eminent ability, who had been twice Prime Minister, should

have wished to hold, by so ignominious a tenure, a place which can have

had no attraction for him but the salary. To that salary, however, Leeds

had clung, year after year; and he now relinquished it with a very bad

grace. He was succeeded by Pembroke; and the Privy Seal which Pembroke

laid down was put into the hands of a peer of recent creation, Viscount

Lonsdale. Lonsdale had been distinguished in the House of Commons as Sir

John Lowther, and had held high office, but had quitted public life in

weariness and disgust, and had passed several years in retirement at his

hereditary seat in Cumberland. He had planted forests round his house,

and had employed Verrio to decorate the interior with gorgeous

frescoes which represented the gods at their banquet of ambrosia. Very

reluctantly, and only in compliance with the earnest and almost angry

importunity of the King, Lonsdale consented to leave his magnificent

retreat, and again to encounter the vexations of public life.

Trumball resigned the Secretaryship of State; and the Seals which he

had held were given to Jersey, who was succeeded at Paris by the Earl of

Manchester.

It is to be remarked that the new Privy Seal and the new Secretary of

State were moderate Tories. The King had probably hoped that, by calling

them to his councils, he should conciliate the opposition. But the

device proved unsuccessful; and soon it appeared that the old practice

of filling the chief offices of state with men taken from various

parties, and hostile to one another, or, at least, unconnected with one

another, was altogether unsuited to the new state of affairs; and that,

since the Commons had become possessed of supreme power, the only way to

prevent them from abusing that power with boundless folly and violence

was to intrust the government to a ministry which enjoyed their

confidence.

While William was making these changes in the great offices of state, a

change in which he took a still deeper interest was taking place in his

own household. He had laboured in vain during many months to keep

the peace between Portland and Albemarle. Albemarle, indeed, was

all courtesy, good humour, and submission; but Portland would not

be conciliated. Even to foreign ministers he railed at his rival and

complained of his master. The whole Court was divided between the

competitors, but divided very unequally. The majority took the side

of Albemarle, whose manners were popular and whose power was evidently

growing. Portland's few adherents were persons who, like him, had

already made their fortunes, and who did not therefore think it worth

their while to transfer their homage to a new patron. One of these

persons tried to enlist Prior in Portland's faction, but with very

little success. "Excuse me," said the poet, "if I follow your example

and my Lord's. My Lord is a model to us all; and you have imitated him

to good purpose. He retires with half a million. You have large grants,

a lucrative employment in Holland, a fine house. I have nothing of the

kind. A court is like those fashionable churches into which we have

looked at Paris. Those who have received the benediction are instantly

away to the Opera House or the wood of Boulogne. Those who have not

received the benediction are pressing and elbowing each other to get

near the altar. You and my Lord have got your blessing, and are quite

right to take yourselves off with it. I have not been blest, and must

fight my way up as well as I can." Prior's wit was his own. But his

worldly wisdom was common to him with multitudes; and the crowd of

those who wanted to be lords of the bedchamber, rangers of parks, and

lieutenants of counties, neglected Portland and tried to ingratiate

themselves with Albemarle.

By one person, however, Portland was still assiduously courted; and that

person was the King. Nothing was omitted which could soothe an irritated

mind. Sometimes William argued, expostulated and implored during two

hours together. But he found the comrade of his youth an altered man,

unreasonable, obstinate and disrespectful even before the public eye.

The Prussian minister, an observant and impartial witness, declared that

his hair had more than once stood on end to see the rude discourtesy

with which the servant repelled the gracious advances of the master.

Over and over William invited his old friend to take the long accustomed

seat in his royal coach, that seat which Prince George himself had never

been permitted to invade; and the invitation was over and over declined

in a way which would have been thought uncivil even between equals.

A sovereign could not, without a culpable sacrifice of his personal

dignity, persist longer in such a contest. Portland was permitted to

withdraw from the palace. To Heinsius, as to a common friend, William

announced this separation in a letter which shows how deeply his

feelings had been wounded. "I cannot tell you what I have suffered. I

have done on my side every thing that I could do to satisfy him; but it

was decreed that a blind jealousy should make him regardless of every

thing that ought to have been dear to him." To Portland himself the King

wrote in language still more touching. "I hope that you will oblige me

in one thing. Keep your key of office. I shall not consider you as bound

to any attendance. But I beg you to let me see you as often as possible.

That will be a great mitigation of the distress which you have caused

me. For, after all that has passed, I cannot help loving you tenderly."

Thus Portland retired to enjoy at his ease immense estates scattered

over half the shires of England, and a hoard of ready money, such, it

was said, as no other private man in Europe possessed. His fortune still

continued to grow. For, though, after the fashion of his countrymen,

he laid out large sums on the interior decoration of his houses, on his

gardens, and on his aviaries, his other expenses were regulated with

strict frugality. His repose was, however, during some years not

uninterrupted. He had been trusted with such grave secrets, and

employed in such high missions, that his assistance was still frequently

necessary to the government; and that assistance was given, not, as

formerly, with the ardour of a devoted friend, but with the exactness

of a conscientious servant. He still continued to receive letters from

William; letters no longer indeed overflowing with kindness, but always

indicative of perfect confidence and esteem.

The chief subject of those letters was the question which had been for a

time settled in the previous autumn at Loo, and which had been reopened

in the spring by the death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria.

As soon as that event was known at Paris, Lewis directed Tallard to

sound William as to a new treaty. The first thought which occurred to

William was that it might be possible to put the Elector of Bavaria in

his son's place. But this suggestion was coldly received at Versailles,

and not without reason. If, indeed, the young Francis Joseph had lived

to succeed Charles, and had then died a minor without issue, the

case would have been very different. Then the Elector would have been

actually administering the government of the Spanish monarchy, and,

supported by France, England and the United Provinces, might without

much difficulty have continued to rule as King the empire which he had

begun to rule as Regent. He would have had also, not indeed a right, but

something which to the vulgar would have looked like a right, to be his

son's heir. Now he was altogether unconnected with Spain. No more

reason could be given for selecting him to be the Catholic King than for

selecting the Margrave of Baden or the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Something

was said about Victor Amadeus of Savoy, and something about the King of

Portugal; but to both there were insurmountable objections. It seemed,

therefore, that the only choice was between a French Prince and an

Austrian Prince; and William learned, with agreeable surprise, that

Lewis might possibly be induced to suffer the younger Archduke to be

King of Spain and the Indies. It was intimated at the same time that the

House of Bourbon would expect, in return for so great a concession to

the rival House of Habsburg, greater advantages than had been thought

sufficient when the Dauphin consented to waive his claims in favour of

a candidate whose elevation could cause no jealousies. What Lewis

demanded, in addition to the portion formerly assigned to France, was

the Milanese. With the Milanese he proposed to buy Lorraine from

its Duke. To the Duke of Lorraine this arrangement would have been

beneficial, and to the people of Lorraine more beneficial still. They

were, and had long been, in a singularly unhappy situation. Lewis

domineered over them as if they had been his subjects, and troubled

himself as little about their happiness as if they had been his enemies.

Since he exercised as absolute a power over them as over the Normans and

Burgundians, it was desirable that he should have as great an interest

in their welfare as in the welfare of the Normans and Burgundians.

On the basis proposed by France William was willing to negotiate; and,

when, in June 1699, he left Kensington to pass the summer at Loo, the

terms of the treaty known as the Second Treaty of Partition were very

nearly adjusted. The great object now was to obtain the consent of the

Emperor. That consent, it should seem, ought to have been readily and

even eagerly given. Had it been given, it might perhaps have saved

Christendom from a war of eleven years. But the policy of Austria was,

at that time, strangely dilatory and irresolute. It was in vain that

William and Heinsius represented the importance of every hour. "The

Emperor's ministers go on dawdling," so the King wrote to Heinsius, "not

because there is any difficulty about the matter, not because they mean

to reject the terms, but solely because they are people who can make up

their minds to nothing." While the negotiation at Vienna was thus drawn

out into endless length, evil tidings came from Madrid.

Spain and her King had long been sunk so low that it seemed impossible

for him to sink lower. Yet the political maladies of the monarchy and

the physical maladies of the monarch went on growing, and exhibited

every day some new and frightful symptom. Since the death of the

Bavarian Prince, the Court had been divided between the Austrian

faction, of which the Queen and the leading ministers Oropesa and Melgar

were the chiefs, and the French faction, of which the most important

member was Cardinal Portocarrero, Archbishop of Toledo. At length an

event which, as far as can now be judged, was not the effect of a deeply

meditated plan, and was altogether unconnected with the disputes about

the succession, gave the advantage to the adherents of France. The

government, having committed the great error of undertaking to supply

Madrid with food, committed the still greater error of neglecting to

perform what it had undertaken. The price of bread doubled. Complaints

were made to the magistrates, and were heard with the indolent apathy

characteristic of the Spanish administration from the highest to the

lowest grade. Then the populace rose, attacked the house of Oropesa,

poured by thousands into the great court of the palace, and insisted on

seeing the King. The Queen appeared in a balcony, and told the rioters

that His Majesty was asleep. Then the multitude set up a roar of fury.

"It is false; we do not believe you. We will see him." "He has slept too

long," said one threatening voice; "and it is high time that he should

wake." The Queen retired weeping; and the wretched being on whose

dominions the sun never set tottered to the window, bowed as he

had never bowed before, muttered some gracious promises, waved a

handkerchief in the air, bowed again, and withdrew. Oropesa, afraid of

being torn to pieces, retired to his country seat. Melgar made some

show of resistance, garrisoned his house, and menaced the rabble with

a shower of grenades, but was soon forced to go after Oropesa; and the

supreme power passed to Portocarrero.

Portocarrero was one of a race of men of whom we, happily for us,

have seen very little, but whose influence has been the curse of Roman

Catholic countries. He was, like Sixtus the Fourth and Alexander the

Sixth, a politician made out of an impious priest. Such politicians are

generally worse than the worst of the laity, more merciless than any

ruffian that can be found in camps, more dishonest than any pettifogger

who haunts the tribunals. The sanctity of their profession has an

unsanctifying influence on them. The lessons of the nursery, the habits

of boyhood and of early youth, leave in the minds of the great majority

of avowed infidels some traces of religion, which, in seasons of

mourning and of sickness, become plainly discernible. But it is scarcely

possible that any such trace should remain in the mind of the hypocrite

who, during many years, is constantly going through what he considers

as the mummery of preaching, saying mass, baptizing, shriving. When an

ecclesiastic of this sort mixes in the contests of men of the world, he

is indeed much to be dreaded as an enemy, but still more to be dreaded

as an ally. From the pulpit where he daily employs his eloquence to

embellish what he regards as fables, from the altar whence he daily

looks down with secret scorn on the prostrate dupes who believe that he

can turn a drop of wine into blood, from the confessional where he daily

studies with cold and scientific attention the morbid anatomy of guilty

consciences, he brings to courts some talents which may move the envy

of the more cunning and unscrupulous of lay courtiers; a rare skill in

reading characters and in managing tempers, a rare art of dissimulation,

a rare dexterity in insinuating what it is not safe to affirm or to

propose in explicit terms. There are two feelings which often prevent

an unprincipled layman from becoming utterly depraved and despicable,

domestic feeling, and chivalrous feeling. His heart may be softened by

the endearments of a family. His pride may revolt from the thought of

doing what does not become a gentleman. But neither with the domestic

feeling nor with the chivalrous feeling has the wicked priest any

sympathy. His gown excludes him from the closest and most tender of

human relations, and at the same time dispenses him from the observation

of the fashionable code of honour.

Such a priest was Portocarrero; and he seems to have been a consummate

master of his craft. To the name of statesman he had no pretensions. The

lofty part of his predecessor Ximenes was out of the range, not more of

his intellectual, than his moral capacity. To reanimate a paralysed

and torpid monarchy, to introduce order and economy into a bankrupt

treasury, to restore the discipline of an army which had become a mob,

to refit a navy which was perishing from mere rottenness, these were

achievements beyond the power, beyond even the ambition, of that ignoble

nature. But there was one task for which the new minister was admirably

qualified, that of establishing, by means of superstitious terror, an

absolute dominion over a feeble mind; and the feeblest of all minds was

that of his unhappy sovereign. Even before the riot which had made the

cardinal supreme in the state, he had succeeded in introducing into the

palace a new confessor selected by himself. In a very short time the

King's malady took a new form. That he was too weak to lift his food

to his misshapen mouth, that, at thirty-seven, he had the bald head and

wrinkled face of a man of seventy, that his complexion was turning from

yellow to green, that he frequently fell down in fits and remained long

insensible, these were no longer the worst symptoms of his malady.

He had always been afraid of ghosts and demons; and it had long been

necessary that three friars should watch every night by his restless bed

as a guard against hobgoblins. But now he was firmly convinced that he

was bewitched, that he was possessed, that there was a devil within him,

that there were devils all around him. He was exorcised according to the

forms of his Church; but this ceremony, instead of quieting him, scared

him out of almost all the little reason that nature had given him. In

his misery and despair he was induced to resort to irregular modes of

relief. His confessor brought to court impostors who pretended that they

could interrogate the powers of darkness. The Devil was called up, sworn

and examined. This strange deponent made oath, as in the presence of

God, that His Catholic Majesty was under a spell, which had been laid on

him many years before, for the purpose of preventing the continuation of

the royal line. A drug had been compounded out of the brains and kidneys

of a human corpse, and had been administered in a cup of chocolate.

This potion had dried up all the sources of life; and the best remedy

to which the patient could now resort would be to swallow a bowl of

consecrated oil every morning before breakfast. Unhappily, the authors

of this story fell into contradictions which they could excuse only by

throwing the blame on Satan, who, they said, was an unwilling witness,

and a liar from the beginning. In the midst of their conjuring, the

Inquisition came down upon them. It must be admitted that, if the Holy

Office had reserved all its terrors for such cases, it would not now

have been remembered as the most hateful judicature that was ever known

among civilised men. The subaltern impostors were thrown into dungeons.

But the chief criminal continued to be master of the King and of

the kingdom. Meanwhile, in the distempered mind of Charles one mania

succeeded another. A longing to pry into those mysteries of the grave

from which human beings avert their thoughts had long been hereditary

in his house. Juana, from whom the mental constitution of her posterity

seems to have derived a morbid taint, had sate, year after year, by the

bed on which lay the ghastly remains of her husband, apparelled in the

rich embroidery and jewels which he had been wont to wear while living.

Her son Charles found an eccentric pleasure in celebrating his own

obsequies, in putting on his shroud, placing himself in the coffin,

covering himself with the pall; and lying as one dead till the requiem

had been sung, and the mourners had departed leaving him alone in the

tomb. Philip the Second found a similar pleasure in gazing on the huge

chest of bronze in which his remains were to be laid, and especially on

the skull which, encircled with the crown of Spain, grinned at him from

the cover. Philip the Fourth, too, hankered after burials and burial

places, gratified his curiosity by gazing on the remains of his great

grandfather, the Emperor, and sometimes stretched himself out at full

length like a corpse in the niche which he had selected for himself

in the royal cemetery. To that cemetery his son was now attracted by

a strange fascination. Europe could show no more magnificent place of

sepulture. A staircase encrusted with jasper led down from the stately

church of the Escurial into an octagon situated just beneath the high

altar. The vault, impervious to the sun, was rich with gold and precious

marbles, which reflected the blaze from a huge chandelier of silver.

On the right and on the left reposed, each in a massy sarcophagus,

the departed kings and queens of Spain. Into this mausoleum the King

descended with a long train of courtiers, and ordered the coffins to be

unclosed. His mother had been embalmed with such consummate skill that

she appeared as she had appeared on her death bed. The body of his

grandfather too seemed entire, but crumbled into dust at the first

touch. From Charles neither the remains of his mother nor those of his

grandfather could draw any sign of sensibility. But, when the gentle and

graceful Louisa of Orleans, the miserable man's first wife, she who

had lighted up his dark existence with one short and pale gleam of

happiness, presented herself, after the lapse of ten years, to his eyes,

his sullen apathy gave way. "She is in heaven," he cried; "and I shall

soon be there with her;" and, with all the speed of which his limbs were

capable, he tottered back to the upper air.

Such was the state of the Court of Spain when, in the autumn of 1699, it

became known that, since the death of the Electoral Prince of Bavaria,

the governments of France, of England and of the United Provinces, were

busily engaged in framing a second Treaty of Partition. That Castilians

would be indignant at learning that any foreign potentate meditated the

dismemberment of that empire of which Castile was the head might have

been foreseen. But it was less easy to foresee that William would be

the chief and indeed almost the only object of their indignation. If the

meditated partition really was unjustifiable, there could be no doubt

that Lewis was far more to blame than William. For it was by Lewis, and

not by William, that the partition had been originally suggested; and it

was Lewis, and not William, who was to gain an accession of territory

by the partition. Nobody could doubt that William would most gladly

have acceded to any arrangement by which the Spanish monarchy, could be

preserved entire without danger to the liberties of Europe, and that he

had agreed to the division of that monarchy solely for the purpose of

contenting Lewis. Nevertheless the Spanish ministers carefully avoided

whatever could give offence to Lewis, and indemnified themselves by

offering a gross indignity to William. The truth is that their pride

had, as extravagant pride often has, a close affinity with meanness.

They knew that it was unsafe to insult Lewis; and they believed that

they might with perfect safety insult William. Lewis was absolute master

of his large kingdom. He had at no great distance armies and fleets

which one word from him would put in motion. If he were provoked,

the white flag might in a few days be again flying on the walls of

Barcelona. His immense power was contemplated by the Castilians with

hope as well as with fear. He and he alone, they imagined, could avert

that dismemberment of which they could not bear to think. Perhaps

he might yet be induced to violate the engagements into which he had

entered with England and Holland, if one of his grandsons were named

successor to the Spanish throne. He, therefore, must be respected and

courted. But William could at that moment do little to hurt or to help.

He could hardly be said to have an army. He could take no step which

would require an outlay of money without the sanction of the House of

Commons; and it seemed to be the chief study of the House of Commons to

cross him and to humble him. The history of the late session was known

to the Spaniards principally by inaccurate reports brought by Irish

friars. And, had those reports been accurate, the real nature of a

Parliamentary struggle between the Court party and the Country party

could have been but very imperfectly understood by the magnates of

a realm in which there had not, during several generations, been any

constitutional opposition to the royal pleasure. At one time it was

generally believed at Madrid, not by the mere rabble, but by Grandees

who had the envied privilege of going in coaches and four through the

streets of the capital, that William had been deposed, that he had

retired to Holland, that the Parliament had resolved that there should

be no more kings, that a commonwealth had been proclaimed, and that a

Doge was about to be appointed and, though this rumour turned out to be

false, it was but too true that the English government was, just at

that conjuncture, in no condition to resent slights. Accordingly, the

Marquess of Canales, who represented the Catholic King at Westminster,

received instructions to remonstrate in strong language, and was not

afraid to go beyond those instructions. He delivered to the Secretary

of State a note abusive and impertinent beyond all example and all

endurance. His master, he wrote, had learnt with amazement that King

William, Holland and other powers,--for the ambassador, prudent even in

his blustering, did not choose to name the King of France,--were engaged

in framing a treaty, not only for settling the succession to the Spanish

crown, but for the detestable purpose of dividing the Spanish monarchy.

The whole scheme was vehemently condemned as contrary to the law of

nature and to the law of God. The ambassador appealed from the King of

England to the Parliament, to the nobility, and to the whole nation, and

concluded by giving notice that he should lay the whole case before the

two Houses when next they met.

The style of this paper shows how strong an impression had been made on

foreign nations by the unfortunate events of the late session. The King,

it was plain, was no longer considered as the head of the government. He

was charged with having committed a wrong; but he was not asked to make

reparation. He was treated as a subordinate officer who had been

guilty of an offence against public law, and was threatened with the

displeasure of the Commons, who, as the real rulers of the state, were

bound to keep their servants in order. The Lords justices read this

outrageous note with indignation, and sent it with all speed to Loo.

Thence they received, with equal speed, directions to send Canales

out of the country. Our ambassador was at the same time recalled from

Madrid; and all diplomatic intercourse between England and Spain was

suspended.

It is probable that Canales would have expressed himself in a less

unbecoming manner, had there not already existed a most unfortunate

quarrel between Spain and William, a quarrel in which William was

perfectly blameless, but in which the unanimous feeling of the English

Parliament and of the English nation was on the side of Spain.

It is necessary to go back some years for the purpose of tracing the

origin and progress of this quarrel. Few portions of our history are

more interesting or instructive; but few have been more obscured and

distorted by passion and prejudice. The story is an exciting one; and it

has generally been told by writers whose judgment had been perverted by

strong national partiality. Their invectives and lamentations have still

to be temperately examined; and it may well be doubted whether, even

now, after the lapse of more than a century and a half, feelings hardly

compatible with temperate examination will not be stirred up in many

minds by the name of Darien. In truth that name is associated with

calamities so cruel that the recollection of them may not unnaturally

disturb the equipoise even of a fair and sedate mind.

The man who brought these calamities on his country was not a mere

visionary or a mere swindler. He was that William Paterson whose name is

honourably associated with the auspicious commencement of a new era in

English commerce and in English finance. His plan of a national bank,

having been examined and approved by the most eminent statesmen who sate

in the Parliament house at Westminster and by the most eminent merchants

who walked the Exchange of London, had been carried into execution with

signal success. He thought, and perhaps thought with reason, that his

services had been ill requited. He was, indeed, one of the original

Directors of the great corporation which owed its existence to him; but

he was not reelected. It may easily be believed that his colleagues,

citizens of ample fortune and of long experience in the practical part

of trade, aldermen, wardens of companies, heads of firms well known in

every Burse throughout the civilised world, were not well pleased to

see among them in Grocers' Hall a foreign adventurer whose whole capital

consisted in an inventive brain and a persuasive tongue. Some of them

were probably weak enough to dislike him for being a Scot; some were

probably mean enough to be jealous of his parts and knowledge; and even

persons who were not unfavourably disposed to him might have discovered,

before they had known him long, that, with all his cleverness, he was

deficient in common sense; that his mind was full of schemes which,

at the first glance, had a specious aspect, but which, on closer

examination, appeared to be impracticable or pernicious; and that the

benefit which the public had derived from one happy project formed by

him would be very dearly purchased if it were taken for granted that

all his other projects must be equally happy. Disgusted by what he

considered as the ingratitude of the English, he repaired to the

Continent, in the hope that he might be able to interest the traders of

the Hanse Towns and the princes of the German Empire in his plans. From

the Continent he returned unsuccessful to London; and then at length the

thought that he might be more justly appreciated by his countrymen than

by strangers seems to have risen in his mind. Just at this time he

fell in with Fletcher of Saltoun, who happened to be in England. These

eccentric men soon became intimate. Each of them had his monomania; and

the two monomaniac suited each other perfectly. Fletcher's whole soul

was possessed by a sore, jealous, punctilious patriotism. His heart was

ulcerated by the thought of the poverty, the feebleness, the political

insignificance of Scotland, and of the indignities which she had

suffered at the hand of her powerful and opulent neighbour. When he

talked of her wrongs his dark meagre face took its sternest expression;

his habitual frown grew blacker, and his eyes flashed more than their

wonted fire. Paterson, on the other hand, firmly believed himself to

have discovered the means of making any state which would follow his

counsel great and prosperous in a time which, when compared with the

life of an individual, could hardly be called long, and which, in the

life of a nation, was but as a moment. There is not the least reason

to believe that he was dishonest. Indeed he would have found more

difficulty in deceiving others had he not begun by deceiving himself.

His faith to his own schemes was strong even to martyrdom; and the

eloquence with which he illustrated and defended them had all the charm

of sincerity and of enthusiasm. Very seldom has any blunder committed

by fools, or any villany devised by impostors, brought on any society

miseries so great as the dreams of these two friends, both of them men

of integrity and both of them men of parts, were destined to bring on

Scotland.

In 1695 the pair went down together to their native country. The

Parliament of that country was then about to meet under the presidency

of Tweeddale, an old acquaintance and country neighbour of Fletcher.

On Tweeddale the first attack was made. He was a shrewd, cautious, old

politician. Yet it should seem that he was not able to hold out against

the skill and energy of the assailants. Perhaps, however, he was

not altogether a dupe. The public mind was at that moment violently

agitated. Men of all parties were clamouring for an inquiry into the

slaughter of Glencoe. There was reason to fear that the session which

was about to commence would be stormy. In such circumstances the Lord

High Commissioner might think that it would be prudent to appease the

anger of the Estates by offering an almost irresistible bait to their

cupidity. If such was the policy of Tweeddale, it was, for the

moment, eminently successful. The Parliament, which met burning with

indignation, was soothed into good humour. The blood of the murdered

Macdonalds continued to cry for vengeance in vain. The schemes of

Paterson, brought forward under the patronage of the ministers of the

Crown, were sanctioned by the unanimous voice of the Legislature.

The great projector was the idol of the whole nation. Men spoke to

him with more profound respect than to the Lord High Commissioner. His

antechamber was crowded with solicitors desirous to catch some drops of

that golden shower of which he was supposed to be the dispenser. To be

seen walking with him in the High Street, to be honoured by him with a

private interview of a quarter of an hour, were enviable distinctions.

He, after the fashion of all the false prophets who have deluded

themselves and others, drew new faith in his own lie from the credulity

of his disciples. His countenance, his voice, his gestures, indicated

boundless self-importance. When he appeared in public he looked,--such

is the language of one who probably had often seen him,--like Atlas

conscious that a world was on his shoulders. But the airs which he gave

himself only heightened the respect and admiration which he inspired.

His demeanour was regarded as a model. Scotch men who wished to be

thought wise looked as like Paterson as they could.

His plan, though as yet disclosed to the public only by glimpses,

was applauded by all classes, factions and sects, lords, merchants,

advocates, divines, Whigs and Jacobites, Cameronians and Episcopalians.

In truth, of all the ten thousand bubbles of which history has preserved

the memory, none was ever more skilfully puffed into existence; none

ever soared higher, or glittered more brilliantly; and none ever burst

with a more lamentable explosion. There was, however, a certain mixture

of truth in the magnificent day dream which produced such fatal effects.

Scotland was, indeed, not blessed with a mild climate or a fertile soil.

But the richest spots that had ever existed on the face of the earth had

been spots quite as little favoured by nature. It was on a bare rock,

surrounded by deep sea, that the streets of Tyre were piled up to a

dizzy height. On that sterile crag were woven the robes of Persian

satraps and Sicilian tyrants; there were fashioned silver bowls and

chargers for the banquets of kings; and there Pomeranian amber was set

in Lydian gold to adorn the necks of queens. In the warehouses were

collected the fine linen of Egypt and the odorous gums of Arabia; the

ivory of India, and the tin of Britain. In the port lay fleets of great

ships which had weathered the storms of the Euxine and the Atlantic.

Powerful and wealthy colonies in distant parts of the world looked up

with filial reverence to the little island; and despots, who trampled

on the laws and outraged the feelings of all the nations between the

Hydaspes and the Aegean, condescended to court the population of that

busy hive. At a later period, on a dreary bank formed by the soil which

the Alpine streams swept down to the Adriatic, rose the palaces of

Venice. Within a space which would not have been thought large enough

for one of the parks of a rude northern baron were collected riches

far exceeding those of a northern kingdom. In almost every one of the

prorate dwellings which fringed the Great Canal were to be seen plate,

mirrors, jewellery, tapestry, paintings, carving, such as might move

the envy of the master of Holyrood. In the arsenal were munitions of war

sufficient to maintain a contest against the whole power of the Ottoman

Empire. And, before the grandeur of Venice had declined, another

commonwealth, still less favoured, if possible, by nature, had

rapidly risen to a power and opulence which the whole civilised world

contemplated with envy and admiration. On a desolate marsh overhung by

fogs and exhaling diseases, a marsh where there was neither wood nor

stone, neither firm earth nor drinkable water, a marsh from which the

ocean on one side and the Rhine on the other were with difficulty kept

out by art, was to be found the most prosperous community in Europe.

The wealth which was collected within five miles of the Stadthouse of

Amsterdam would purchase the fee simple of Scotland. And why should

this be? Was there any reason to believe that nature had bestowed on the

Phoenician, on the Venetian, or on the Hollander, a larger measure of

activity, of ingenuity, of forethought, of self command, than on the

citizen of Edinburgh or Glasgow? The truth was that, in all those

qualities which conduce to success in life, and especially in commercial

life, the Scot had never been surpassed; perhaps he had never been

equalled. All that was necessary was that his energy should take a

proper direction, and a proper direction Paterson undertook to give.

His esoteric project was the original project of Christopher Columbus,

extended and modified. Columbus had hoped to establish a communication

between our quarter of the world and India across the great western

ocean. But he was stopped by an unexpected obstacle. The American

continent, stretching far north and far south into cold and inhospitable

regions, presented what seemed an insurmountable barrier to his

progress; and, in the same year in which he first set foot on that

continent, Gama reached Malabar by doubling the Cape of Good Hope. The

consequence was that during two hundred years the trade of Europe with

the remoter parts of Asia had been carried on by rounding the immense

peninsula of Africa. Paterson now revived the project of Columbus, and

persuaded himself and others that it was possible to carry that project

into effect in such a manner as to make his country the greatest

emporium that had ever existed on our globe.

For this purpose it was necessary to occupy in America some spot which

might be a resting place between Scotland and India. It was true that

almost every habitable part of America had already been seized by some

European power. Paterson, however, imagined that one province, the most

important of all, had been overlooked by the short-sighted cupidity of

vulgar politicians and vulgar traders. The isthmus which joined the

two great continents of the New World remained, according to him,

unappropriated. Great Spanish viceroyalties, he said, lay on the east

and on the west; but the mountains and forests of Darien were abandoned

to rude tribes which followed their own usages and obeyed their own

princes. He had been in that part of the world, in what character was

not quite clear. Some said that he had gone thither to convert the

Indians, and some that he had gone thither to rob the Spaniards. But,

missionary or pirate, he had visited Darien, and had brought away none

but delightful recollections. The havens, he averred, were capacious

and secure; the sea swarmed with turtle; the country was so mountainous

that, within nine degrees of the equator, the climate was temperate;

and yet the inequalities of the ground offered no impediment to the

conveyance of goods. Nothing would be easier than to construct roads

along which a string of mules or a wheeled carriage might in the course

of a single day pass from sea to sea. The soil was, to the depth of

several feet, a rich black mould, on which a profusion of valuable herbs

and fruits grew spontaneously, and on which all the choicest productions

of tropical regions might easily be raised by human industry and art;

and yet the exuberant fertility of the earth had not tainted the purity

of the air. Considered merely as a place of residence, the isthmus was

a paradise. A colony placed there could not fail to prosper, even if it

had no wealth except what was derived from agriculture. But agriculture

was a secondary object in the colonization of Darien. Let but that

precious neck of land be occupied by an intelligent, an enterprising,

a thrifty race; and, in a few years, the whole trade between India and

Europe must be drawn to that point. The tedious and perilous passage

round Africa would soon be abandoned. The merchant would no longer

expose his cargoes to the mountainous billows and capricious gales

of the Antarctic seas. The greater part of the voyage from Europe to

Darien, and the whole voyage from Darien to the richest kingdoms of

Asia, would be a rapid yet easy gliding before the trade winds over blue

and sparkling waters. The voyage back across the Pacific would, in the

latitude of Japan, be almost equally speedy and pleasant. Time, labour,

money, would be saved. The returns would come in more quickly. Fewer

hands would be required to navigate the ships. The loss of a vessel

would be a rare event. The trade would increase fast. In a short time

it would double; and it would all pass through Darien. Whoever possessed

that door of the sea, that key of the universe,--such were the bold

figures which Paterson loved to employ,--would give law to both

hemispheres; and would, by peaceful arts, without shedding one drop of

blood, establish an empire as splendid as that of Cyrus or Alexander. Of

the kingdoms of Europe, Scotland was, as yet, the poorest and the least

considered. If she would but occupy Darien, if she would but become one

great free port, one great warehouse for the wealth which the soil of

Darien might produce, and for the still greater wealth which would be

poured into Darien from Canton and Siam, from Ceylon and the Moluccas,

from the mouths of the Ganges and the Gulf of Cambay, she would at once

take her place in the first rank among nations. No rival would be able

to contend with her either in the West Indian or in the East Indian

trade. The beggarly country, as it had been insolently called by the

inhabitants of warmer and more fruitful regions, would be the great mart

for the choicest luxuries, sugar, rum, coffee, chocolate, tobacco, the

tea and porcelain of China, the muslin of Dacca, the shawls of Cashmere,

the diamonds of Golconda, the pearls of Karrack, the delicious birds'

nests of Nicobar, cinnamon and pepper, ivory and sandal wood. From

Scotland would come all the finest jewels and brocade worn by duchesses

at the balls of St. James's and Versailles. From Scotland would come

all the saltpetre which would furnish the means of war to the fleets and

armies of contending potentates. And on all the vast riches which would

be constantly passing through the little kingdom a toll would be paid

which would remain behind. There would be a prosperity such as might

seem fabulous, a prosperity of which every Scotchman, from the peer to

the cadie, would partake. Soon, all along the now desolate shores of the

Forth and Clyde, villas and pleasure grounds would be as thick as along

the edges of the Dutch canals. Edinburgh would vie with London and

Paris; and the baillie of Glasgow or Dundee would have as stately and

well furnished a mansion, and as fine a gallery of pictures, as any

burgomaster of Amsterdam.

This magnificent plan was at first but partially disclosed to the

public. A colony was to be planted; a vast trade was to be opened

between both the Indies and Scotland; but the name of Darien was as yet

pronounced only in whispers by Paterson and by his most confidential

friends. He had however shown enough to excite boundless hopes and

desires. How well he succeeded in inspiring others with his own feelings

is sufficiently proved by the memorable Act to which the Lord High

Commissioner gave the Royal sanction on the 26th of June 1695. By this

Act some persons who were named, and such other persons as should join

with them, were formed into a corporation, which was to be named the

Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies. The amount of the

capital to be employed was not fixed by law; but it was provided that

one half of the stock at least must be held by Scotchmen resident

in Scotland, and that no stock which had been originally held by a

Scotchman resident in Scotland should ever be transferred to any but

a Scotchman resident in Scotland. An entire monopoly of the trade with

Asia, Africa and America, for a term of thirty-one years, was granted

to the Company. All goods imported by the Company were during twenty-one

years to be duty free, with the exception of foreign sugar and tobacco.

Sugar and tobacco grown on the Company's own plantations were exempted

from all taxation. Every member and every servant of the Company was to

be privileged against impressment and arrest. If any of these privileged

persons was impressed or arrested, the Company was authorised to release

him, and to demand the assistance both of the civil and of the military

power. The Company was authorised to take possession of unoccupied

territories in any part of Asia, Africa or America, and there to plant

colonies, to build towns and forts, to impose taxes, and to provide

magazines, arms and ammunition, to raise troops, to wage war, to

conclude treaties; and the King was made to promise that, if any foreign

state should injure the Company, he would interpose, and would, at the

public charge, obtain reparation. Lastly it was provided that, in order

to give greater security and solemnity to this most exorbitant grant,

the whole substance of the Act should be set forth in Letters Patent to

which the Chancellor was directed to put the Great Seal without delay.

The letters were drawn; the Great Seal was affixed; the subscription

books were opened; the shares were fixed at a hundred pounds sterling

each; and from the Pentland Firth to the Solway Firth every man who had

a hundred pounds was impatient to put down his name. About two hundred

and twenty thousand pounds were actually paid up. This may not, at first

sight, appear a large sum to those who remember the bubbles of 1825 and

of 1845, and would assuredly not have sufficed to defray the charge of

three months of war with Spain. Yet the effort was marvellous when

it may be affirmed with confidence that the Scotch people voluntarily

contributed for the colonisation of Darien a larger proportion of

their substance than any other people ever, in the same space of time,

voluntarily contributed to any commercial undertaking. A great part of

Scotland was then as poor and rude as Iceland now is. There were five or

six shires which did not altogether contain so many guineas and crowns

as were tossed about every day by the shovels of a single goldsmith

in Lombard Street. Even the nobles had very little ready money. They

generally took a large part of their rents in kind, and were thus able,

on their own domains, to live plentifully and hospitably. But there were

many esquires in Kent and Somersetshire who received from their tenants

a greater quantity of gold and silver than a Duke of Cordon or a

Marquess of Atholl drew from extensive provinces. The pecuniary

remuneration of the clergy was such as would have moved the pity of the

most needy curate who thought it a privilege to drink his ale and smoke

his pipe in the kitchen of an English manor house. Even in the fertile

Merse there were parishes of which the minister received only from

four to eight pounds sterling in cash. The official income of the Lord

President of the Court of Session was only five hundred a year; that

of the Lord Justice Clerk only four hundred a year. The land tax of

the whole kingdom was fixed some years later by the Treaty of Union at

little more than half the land tax of the single county of Norfolk. Four

hundred thousand pounds probably bore as great a ratio to the wealth of

Scotland then as forty millions would bear now.

The list of the members of the Darien Company deserves to be examined.

The number of shareholders was about fourteen hundred. The largest

quantity of stock registered in one name was three thousand pounds. The

heads of three noble houses took three thousand pounds each, the Duke

of Hamilton, the Duke of Queensbury and Lord Belhaven, a man of ability,

spirit and patriotism, who had entered into the design with enthusiasm

not inferior to that of Fletcher. Argyle held fifteen hundred pounds.

John Dalrymple, but too well known as the Master of Stair, had just

succeeded to his father's title and estate, and was now Viscount Stair.

He put down his name for a thousand pounds. The number of Scotch peers

who subscribed was between thirty and forty. The City of Edinburgh, in

its corporate capacity, took three thousand pounds, the City of Glasgow

three thousand, the City of Perth two thousand. But the great majority

of the subscribers contributed only one hundred or two hundred pounds

each. A very few divines who were settled in the capital or in other

large towns were able to purchase shares. It is melancholy to see in the

roll the name of more than one professional man whose paternal anxiety

led him to lay out probably all his hardly earned savings in purchasing

a hundred pound share for each of his children. If, indeed, Paterson's

predictions had been verified, such a share would, according to the

notions of that age and country, have been a handsome portion for the

daughter of a writer or a surgeon.

That the Scotch are a people eminently intelligent, wary, resolute and

self possessed, is obvious to the most superficial observation. That

they are a people peculiarly liable to dangerous fits of passion and

delusions of the imagination is less generally acknowledged, but is

not less true. The whole kingdom seemed to have gone mad. Paterson had

acquired an influence resembling rather that of the founder of a new

religion, that of a Mahomet, that of a Joseph Smith, than that of a

commercial projector. Blind faith in a religion, fanatical zeal for a

religion, are too common to astonish us. But such faith and zeal seem

strangely out of place in the transactions of the money market. It is

true that we are judging after the event. But before the event materials

sufficient for the forming of a sound judgment were within the reach of

all who cared to use them. It seems incredible that men of sense, who

had only a vague and general notion of Paterson's scheme, should

have staked every thing on the success of that scheme. It seems more

incredible still that men to whom the details of that scheme had been

confided should not have looked into any of the common books of history

or geography in which an account of Darien might have been found, and

should not have asked themselves the simple question, whether Spain

was likely to endure a Scotch colony in the midst of her Transatlantic

dominions. It was notorious that she claimed the sovereignty of the

isthmus on specious, nay, on solid, grounds. A Spaniard had been the

first discoverer of the coast of Darien. A Spaniard had built a town

and established a government on that coast. A Spaniard had, with great

labour and peril, crossed the mountainous neck of land, had seen rolling

beneath him the vast Pacific, never before revealed to European eyes,

had descended, sword in hand, into the waves up to his girdle, and had

there solemnly taken possession of sea and shore in the name of the

Crown of Castile. It was true that the region which Paterson described

as a paradise had been found by the first Castilian settlers to be a

land of misery and death. The poisonous air, exhaled from rank jungle

and stagnant water, had compelled them to remove to the neighbouring

haven of Panama; and the Red Indians had been contemptuously permitted

to live after their own fashion on the pestilential soil. But that soil

was still considered, and might well be considered, by Spain as her own.

In many countries there were tracts of morass, of mountain, of forest,

in which governments did not think it worth while to be at the expense

of maintaining order, and in which rude tribes enjoyed by connivance

a kind of independence. It was not necessary for the members of the

Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies to look very far

for an example. In some highland districts, not more than a hundred

miles from Edinburgh, dwelt clans which had always regarded the

authority of King, Parliament, Privy Council and Court of Session, quite

as little as the aboriginal population of Darien regarded the authority

of the Spanish Viceroys and Audiences. Yet it would surely have been

thought an outrageous violation of public law in the King of Spain to

take possession of Appin and Lochaber. And would it be a less outrageous

violation of public law in the Scots to seize on a province in the very

centre of his possessions, on the plea that this province was in the

same state in which Appin and Lochaber had been during centuries?

So grossly unjust was Paterson's scheme; and yet it was less unjust

than impolitic. Torpid as Spain had become, there was still one point on

which she was exquisitely sensitive. The slightest encroachment of any

other European power even on the outskirts of her American dominions

sufficed to disturb her repose and to brace her paralysed nerves. To

imagine that she would tamely suffer adventurers from one of the most

insignificant kingdoms of the Old World to form a settlement in the

midst of her empire, within a day's sail of Portobello on one side and

of Carthagena on the other, was ludicrously absurd. She would have been

just as likely to let them take possession of the Escurial. It was,

therefore, evident that, before the new Company could even begin its

commercial operations, there must be a war with Spain and a complete

triumph over Spain. What means had the Company of waging such a war,

and what chance of achieving such a triumph? The ordinary revenue of

Scotland in time of peace was between sixty and seventy thousand a year.

The extraordinary supplies granted to the Crown during the war with

France had amounted perhaps to as much more. Spain, it is true, was

no longer the Spain of Pavia and Lepanto. But, even in her decay,

she possessed in Europe resources which exceeded thirty fold those

of Scotland; and in America, where the struggle must take place, the

disproportion was still greater. The Spanish fleets and arsenals were

doubtless in wretched condition. But there were Spanish fleets; there

were Spanish arsenals. The galleons, which sailed every year from

Seville to the neighbourhood of Darien and from the neighbourhood of

Darien back to Seville, were in tolerable condition, and formed, by

themselves, a considerable armament. Scotland had not a single ship

of the line, nor a single dockyard where such a ship could be built.

A marine sufficient to overpower that of Spain must be, not merely

equipped and manned, but created. An armed force sufficient to defend

the isthmus against the whole power of the viceroyalties of Mexico and

Peru must be sent over five thousand miles of ocean. What was the

charge of such an expedition likely to be? Oliver had, in the preceding

generation, wrested a West Indian island from Spain; but, in order to do

this, Oliver, a man who thoroughly understood the administration of war,

who wasted nothing, and who was excellently served, had been forced to

spend, in a single year, on his navy alone, twenty times the ordinary

revenue of Scotland; and, since his days, war had been constantly

becoming more and more costly.

It was plain that Scotland could not alone support the charge of a

contest with the enemy whom Paterson was bent on provoking. And what

assistance was she likely to have from abroad? Undoubtedly the vast

colonial empire and the narrow colonial policy of Spain were regarded

with an evil eye by more than one great maritime power. But there was

no great maritime power which would not far rather have seen the isthmus

between the Atlantic and the Pacific in the hands of Spain than in the

hands of the Darien Company. Lewis could not but dread whatever tended

to aggrandise a state governed by William. To Holland the East India

trade was as the apple of her eye. She had been the chief gainer by the

discoveries of Gama; and it might be expected that she would do all

that could be done by craft, and, if need were, by violence, rather

than suffer any rival to be to her what she had been to Venice. England

remained; and Paterson was sanguine enough to flatter himself that

England might be induced to lend her powerful aid to the Company. He and

Lord Belhaven repaired to London, opened an office in Clement's Lane,

formed a Board of Directors auxiliary to the Central Board at Edinburgh,

and invited the capitalists of the Royal Exchange to subscribe for the

stock which had not been reserved for Scotchmen resident in Scotland.

A few moneyed men were allured by the bait; but the clamour of the City

was loud and menacing; and from the City a feeling of indignation spread

fast through the country. In this feeling there was undoubtedly a large

mixture of evil. National antipathy operated on some minds, religious

antipathy on others. But it is impossible to deny that the anger which

Paterson's schemes excited throughout the south of the island was, in

the main, just and reasonable. Though it was not yet generally known in

what precise spot his colony was to be planted, there could be little

doubt that he intended to occupy some part of America; and there could

be as little doubt that such occupation would be resisted. There would

be a maritime war; and such a war Scotland had no means of carrying on.

The state of her finances was such that she must be quite unable to fit

out even a single squadron of moderate size. Before the conflict had

lasted three months, she would have neither money nor credit left.

These things were obvious to every coffeehouse politician; and it was

impossible to believe that they had escaped the notice of men so able

and well informed as some who sate in the Privy Council and Parliament

at Edinburgh. In one way only could the conduct of these schemers be

explained. They meant to make a dupe and a tool of the Southron. The two

British kingdoms were so closely connected, physically and politically,

that it was scarcely possible for one of them to be at peace with a

power with which the other was at war. If the Scotch drew King William

into a quarrel, England must, from regard to her own dignity which

was bound up with his, support him in it. She was to be tricked into a

bloody and expensive contest in the event of which she had no interest;

nay, into a contest in which victory would be a greater calamity to her

than defeat. She was to lavish her wealth and the lives of her seamen,

in order that a set of cunning foreigners might enjoy a monopoly by

which she would be the chief sufferer. She was to conquer and defend

provinces for this Scotch Corporation; and her reward was to be that

her merchants were to be undersold, her customers decoyed away, her

exchequer beggared. There would be an end to the disputes between

the old East India Company and the new East India Company; for both

Companies would be ruined alike. The two great springs of revenue would

be dried up together. What would be the receipt of the Customs, what

of the Excise, when vast magazines of sugar, rum, tobacco, coffee,

chocolate, tea, spices, silks, muslins, all duty free, should be formed

along the estuaries of the Forth and of the Clyde, and along the border

from the mouth of the Esk to the mouth of the Tweed? What army, what

fleet, would be sufficient to protect the interests of the government

and of the fair trader when the whole kingdom of Scotland should be

turned into one great smuggling establishment? Paterson's plan was

simply this, that England should first spend millions in defence of

the trade of his Company, and should then be plundered of twice as many

millions by means of that very trade.

The cry of the city and of the nation was soon echoed by the

legislature. When the Parliament met for the first time after the

general election of 1695, Rochester called the attention of the Lords

to the constitution and designs of the Company. Several witnesses were

summoned to the bar, and gave evidence which produced a powerful effect

on the House. "If these Scots are to have their way," said one peer, "I

shall go and settle in Scotland, and not stay here to be made a beggar."

The Lords resolved to represent strongly to the King the injustice of

requiring England to exert her power in support of an enterprise which,

if successful, must be fatal to her commerce and to her finances. A

representation was drawn up and communicated to the Commons. The Commons

eagerly concurred, and complimented the Peers on the promptitude with

which their Lordships had, on this occasion, stood forth to protect the

public interests. The two Houses went up together to Kensington with

the address. William had been under the walls of Namur when the Act

for incorporating the Company had been touched with his sceptre at

Edinburgh, and had known nothing about that Act till his attention had

been called to it by the clamour of his English subjects. He now said,

in plain terms, that he had been ill served in Scotland, but that he

would try to find a remedy for the evil which bad been brought to his

notice. The Lord High Commissioner Tweeddale and Secretary Johnstone

were immediately dismissed. But the Act which had been passed by their

management still continued to be law in Scotland, nor was it in their

master's power to undo what they had done.

The Commons were not content with addressing the throne. They instituted

an inquiry into the proceedings of the Scotch Company in London.

Belhaven made his escape to his own country, and was there beyond the

reach of the Serjeant-at-Arms. But Paterson and some of his confederates

were severely examined. It soon appeared that the Board which was

sitting in Clement's Lane had done things which were certainly imprudent

and perhaps illegal. The Act of Incorporation empowered the detectors to

take and to administer to their servants an oath of fidelity. But that

Act was on the south of the Tweed a nullity. Nevertheless the directors

had, in the heart of the City of London, taken and administered this

oath, and had thus, by implication, asserted that the powers conferred

on them by the legislature of Scotland accompanied them to England. It

was resolved that they had been guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour,

and that they should be impeached. A committee was appointed to frame

articles of impeachment; but the task proved a difficult one; and the

prosecution was suffered to drop, not however till the few English

capitalists who had at first been friendly to Paterson's project had

been terrified into renouncing all connection with him.

Now, surely, if not before, Paterson ought to have seen that his project

could end in nothing but shame to himself and ruin to his worshippers.

From the first it had been clear that England alone could protect his

Company against the enmity of Spain; and it was now clear that Spain

would be a less formidable enemy than England. It was impossible that

his plan could excite greater indignation in the Council of the Indies

at Madrid, or in the House of Trade at Seville, than it had excited in

London. Unhappily he was given over to a strong delusion, and the blind

multitude eagerly followed their blind leader. Indeed his dupes were

maddened by that which should have sobered them. The proceedings of the

Parliament which sate at Westminster, proceedings just and reasonable

in substance, but in manner doubtless harsh and insolent, had roused

the angry passions of a nation, feeble indeed in numbers and in material

resources, but eminently high spirited. The proverbial pride of the

Scotch was too much for their proverbial shrewdness. The votes of

the English Lords and Commons were treated with marked contempt. The

populace of Edinburgh burned Rochester in effigy. Money was poured

faster than ever into the treasury of the Company. A stately house, in

Milne Square, then the most modern and fashionable part of Edinburgh,

was purchased and fitted up at once as an office and a warehouse. Ships

adapted both for war and for trade were required; but the means of

building such ships did not exist in Scotland; and no firm in the south

of the island was disposed to enter into a contract which might not

improbably be considered by the House of Commons as an impeachable

offence. It was necessary to have recourse to the dockyards of Amsterdam

and Hamburg. At an expense of fifty thousand pounds a few vessels were

procured, the largest of which would hardly have ranked as sixtieth in

the English navy; and with this force, a force not sufficient to keep

the pirates of Sallee in check, the Company threw down the gauntlet to

all the maritime powers in the world.

It was not till the summer of 1698 that all was ready for the expedition

which was to change the face of the globe. The number of seamen and

colonists who embarked at Leith was twelve hundred. Of the colonists

many were younger sons of honourable families, or officers who had been

disbanded since the peace. It was impossible to find room for all who

were desirous of emigrating. It is said that some persons who had vainly

applied for a passage hid themselves in dark corners about the ships,

and, when discovered, refused to depart, clung to the rigging, and

were at last taken on shore by main force. This infatuation is the more

extraordinary because few of the adventurers knew to what place they

were going. All that was quite certain was that a colony was to be

planted somewhere, and to be named Caledonia. The general opinion was

that the fleet would steer for some part of the coast of America. But

this opinion was not universal. At the Dutch Embassy in Saint James's

Square there was an uneasy suspicion that the new Caledonia would be

founded among those Eastern spice islands with which Amsterdam had long

carried on a lucrative commerce.

The supreme direction of the expedition was entrusted to a Council of

Seven. Two Presbyterian chaplains and a preceptor were on board. A cargo

had been laid in which was afterwards the subject of much mirth to the

enemies of the Company, slippers innumerable, four thousand periwigs of

all kinds from plain bobs to those magnificent structures which, in that

age, towered high above the foreheads and descended to the elbows of

men of fashion, bales of Scotch woollen stuffs which nobody within the

tropics could wear, and many hundreds of English bibles which neither

Spaniard nor Indian could read. Paterson, flushed with pride and hope,

not only accompanied the expedition, but took with him his wife, a

comely dame, whose heart he had won in London, where she had presided

over one of the great coffeehouses in the neighbourhood of the Royal

Exchange. At length on the twenty-fifth of July the ships, followed by

many tearful eyes, and commended to heaven in many vain prayers, sailed

out of the estuary of the Forth.

The voyage was much longer than a voyage to the Antipodes now is; and

the adventurers suffered much. The rations were scanty; there were

bitter complaints both of the bread and of the meat; and, when the

little fleet, after passing round the Orkneys and Ireland, touched at

Madeira, those gentlemen who had fine clothes among their baggage were

glad to exchange embroidered coats and laced waistcoats for provisions

and wine. From Madeira the adventurers ran across the Atlantic, landed

on an uninhabited islet lying between Porto Rico and St. Thomas, took

possession of this desolate spot in the name of the Company, set up a

tent, and hoisted the white cross of St. Andrew. Soon, however, they

were warned off by an officer who was sent from St. Thomas to inform

them that they were trespassing on the territory of the King of Denmark.

They proceeded on their voyage, having obtained the services of an old

buccaneer who knew the coast of Central America well. Under his pilotage

they anchored on the first of November close to the Isthmus of Darien.

One of the greatest princes of the country soon came on board. The

courtiers who attended him, ten or twelve in number, were stark naked;

but he was distinguished by a red coat, a pair of cotton drawers, and

an old hat. He had a Spanish name, spoke Spanish, and affected the grave

deportment of a Spanish don. The Scotch propitiated Andreas, as he was

called, by a present of a new hat blazing with gold lace, and assured

him that, if he would trade with them, they would treat him better than

the Castilians had done.

A few hours later the chiefs of the expedition went on shore, took

formal possession of the country, and named it Caledonia. They were

pleased with the aspect of a small peninsula about three miles in length

and a quarter of a mile in breadth, and determined to fix here the city

of New Edinburgh, destined, as they hoped, to be the great emporium

of both Indies. The peninsula terminated in a low promontory of about

thirty acres, which might easily be turned into an island by digging a

trench. The trench was dug; and on the ground thus separated from

the main land a fort was constructed; fifty guns were placed on the

ramparts; and within the enclosures houses were speedily built and

thatched with palm leaves.

Negotiations were opened with the chieftains, as they were called, who

governed the neighbouring tribes. Among these savage rulers were found

as insatiable a cupidity, as watchful a jealousy, and as punctilious a

pride, as among the potentates whose disputes had seemed likely to make

the Congress of Ryswick eternal. One prince hated the Spaniards because

a fine rifle had been taken away from him by the Governor of Portobello

on the plea that such a weapon was too good for a red man. Another loved

the Spaniards because they had given him a stick tipped with silver. On

the whole, the new comers succeeded in making friends of the aboriginal

race. One mighty monarch, the Lewis the Great of the isthmus, who wore

with pride a cap of white reeds lined with red silk and adorned with an

ostrich feather, seemed well inclined to the strangers, received them

hospitably in a palace built of canes and covered with palmetto royal,

and regaled them with calabashes of a sort of ale brewed from Indian

corn and potatoes. Another chief set his mark to a treaty of peace and

alliance with the colony. A third consented to become a vassal of the

Company, received with great delight a commission embellished with

gold thread and flowered riband, and swallowed to the health of his new

masters not a few bumpers of their own brandy.

Meanwhile the internal government of the colony was organised according

to a plan devised by the directors at Edinburgh. The settlers were

divided into bands of fifty or sixty; each band chose a representative;

and thus was formed an assembly which took the magnificent name of

Parliament. This Parliament speedily framed a curious code. The first

article provided that the precepts, instructions, examples, commands and

prohibitions expressed and contained in the Holy Scriptures should have

the full force and effect of laws in New Caledonia, an enactment which

proves that those who drew it up either did not know what the Holy

Scriptures contained or did not know what a law meant. There is another

provision which shows not less clearly how far these legislators were

from understanding the first principles of legislation. "Benefits

received and good services done shall always be generously and

thankfully compensated, whether a prior bargain hath been made or not;

and, if it shall happen to be otherwise, and the Benefactor obliged

justly to complain of the ingratitude, the Ungrateful shall in such case

be obliged to give threefold satisfaction at the least." An article much

more creditable to the little Parliament, and much needed in a community

which was likely to be constantly at war, prohibits, on pain of death,

the violation of female captives.

By this time all the Antilles and all the shores of the Gulf of Mexico

were in a ferment. The new colony was the object of universal hatred.

The Spaniards began to fit out armaments. The chiefs of the French

dependencies in the West Indies eagerly offered assistance to

the Spaniards. The governors of the English settlements put forth

proclamations interdicting all communication with this nest of

buccaneers. Just at this time, the Dolphin, a vessel of fourteen guns,

which was the property of the Scotch Company, was driven on shore by

stress of weather under the walls of Carthagena. The ship and cargo were

confiscated, the crew imprisoned and put in irons. Some of the sailors

were treated as slaves, and compelled to sweep the streets and to work

on the fortifications. Others, and among them the captain, were sent

to Seville to be tried for piracy. Soon an envoy with a flag of truce

arrived at Carthagena, and, in the name of the Council of Caledonia,

demanded the release of the prisoners. He delivered to the authorities a

letter threatening them with the vengeance of the King of Great Britain,

and a copy of the Act of Parliament by which the Company had been

created. The Castilian governor, who probably knew that William, as

Sovereign of England, would not, and, as Sovereign of Scotland, could

not, protect the squatters who had occupied Darien, flung away both

letter and Act of Parliament with a gesture of contempt, called for a

guard, and was with difficulty dissuaded from throwing the messenger

into a dungeon. The Council of Caledonia, in great indignation, issued

letters of mark and reprisal against Spanish vessels. What every man of

common sense must have foreseen had taken place. The Scottish flag had

been but a few months planted on the walls of New Edinburgh; and already

a war, which Scotland, without the help of England, was utterly unable

to sustain, had begun.

By this time it was known in Europe that the mysterious voyage of the

adventurers from the Forth had ended at Darien. The ambassador of the

Catholic King repaired to Kensington, and complained bitterly to William

of this outrageous violation of the law of nations. Preparations were

made in the Spanish ports for an expedition against the intruders; and

in no Spanish port were there more fervent wishes for the success of

that expedition than in the cities of London and Bristol. In Scotland,

on the other hand, the exultation was boundless. In the parish churches

all over the kingdom the ministers gave public thanks to God for having

vouchsafed thus far to protect and bless the infant colony. At some

places a day was set apart for religious exercises on this account. In

every borough bells were rung; bonfires were lighted; and candles were

placed in the windows at night. During some months all the reports which

arrived from the other side of the Atlantic were such as to excite hope

and joy in the north of the island, and alarm and envy in the south. The

colonists, it was asserted, had found rich gold mines, mines in which

the precious metal was far more abundant and in a far purer state than

on the coast of Guinea. Provisions were plentiful. The rainy season had

not proved unhealthy. The settlement was well fortified. Sixty guns were

mounted on the ramparts. An immense crop of Indian corn was expected.

The aboriginal tribes were friendly. Emigrants from various quarters

were coming in. The population of Caledonia had already increased from

twelve hundred to ten thousand. The riches of the country,--these are

the words of a newspaper of that time,--were great beyond imagination.

The mania in Scotland rose to the highest point. Munitions of war and

implements of agriculture were provided in large quantities. Multitudes

were impatient to emigrate to the land of promise.

In August 1699 four ships, with thirteen hundred men on board, were

despatched by the Company to Caledonia. The spiritual care of these

emigrants was entrusted to divines of the Church of Scotland. One of

these was that Alexander Shields whose Hind Let Loose proves that in

his zeal for the Covenant he had forgotten the Gospel. To another, John

Borland, we owe the best account of the voyage which is now extant. The

General Assembly had charged the chaplains to divide the colonists into

congregations, to appoint ruling elders, to constitute a presbytery,

and to labour for the propagation of divine truth among the Pagan

inhabitants of Darien. The second expedition sailed as the first had

sailed, amidst the acclamations and blessings of all Scotland. During

the earlier part of September the whole nation was dreaming a delightful

dream of prosperity and glory; and triumphing, somewhat maliciously,

in the vexation of the English. But, before the close of that month, it

began to be rumoured about Lombard Street and Cheapside that letters had

arrived from Jamaica with strange news. The colony from which so much

had been hoped and dreaded was no more. It had disappeared from the face

of the earth. The report spread to Edinburgh, but was received there

with scornful incredulity. It was an impudent lie devised by some

Englishmen who could not bear to see that, in spite of the votes of the

English Parliament, in spite of the proclamations of the governors of

the English colonies, Caledonia was waxing great and opulent. Nay, the

inventor of the fable was named. It was declared to be quite certain

that Secretary Vernon was the man. On the fourth of October was put

forth a vehement contradiction of the story.

On the fifth the whole truth was known. Letters were received from New

York announcing that a few miserable men, the remains of the colony

which was to have been the garden, the warehouse, the mart, of the whole

world, their bones peeping through their skin, and hunger and fever

written in their faces, had arrived in the Hudson.

The grief, the dismay and the rage of those who had a few hours before

fancied themselves masters of all the wealth of both Indies may easily

be imagined. The Directors, in their fury, lost all self command, and,

in their official letters, railed at the betrayers of Scotland, the

white-livered deserters. The truth is that those who used these hard

words were far more deserving of blame than the wretches whom they had

sent to destruction, and whom they now reviled for not staying to be

utterly destroyed. Nothing had happened but what might easily have

been foreseen. The Company had, in childish reliance on the word of an

enthusiastic projector, and in defiance of facts known to every educated

man in Europe, taken it for granted that emigrants born and bred within

ten degrees of the Arctic Circle would enjoy excellent health within

ten degrees of the Equator. Nay, statesmen and scholars had been deluded

into the belief that a country which, as they might have read in books

so common as those of Hakluyt and Purchas, was noted even among tropical

countries for its insalubrity, and had been abandoned by the Spaniards

solely on account of its insalubrity, was a Montpelier. Nor had any of

Paterson's dupes considered how colonists from Fife or Lothian, who had

never in their lives known what it was to feel the heat of a distressing

midsummer day, could endure the labour of breaking clods and carrying

burdens under the fierce blaze of a vertical sun. It ought to have been

remembered that such colonists would have to do for themselves what

English, French, Dutch, and Spanish colonists employed Negroes or

Indians to do for them. It was seldom indeed that a white freeman in

Barbadoes or Martinique, in Guiana or at Panama, was employed in severe

bodily labour. But the Scotch who settled at Darien must at first be

without slaves, and must therefore dig the trench round their town,

build their houses, cultivate their fields, hew wood, and draw water,

with their own hands. Such toil in such an atmosphere was too much for

them. The provisions which they had brought out had been of no good

quality, and had not been improved by lapse of time or by change of

climate. The yams and plantains did not suit stomachs accustomed to good

oatmeal. The flesh of wild animals and the green fat of the turtle, a

luxury then unknown in Europe, went but a small way; and supplies were

not to be expected from any foreign settlement. During the cool months,

however, which immediately followed the occupation of the isthmus there

were few deaths. But, before the equinox, disease began to make fearful

havoc in the little community. The mortality gradually rose to ten or

twelve a day. Both the clergymen who had accompanied the expedition

died. Paterson buried his wife in that soil which, as he had assured

his too credulous countrymen, exhaled health and vigour. He was himself

stretched on his pallet by an intermittent fever. Still he would not

admit that the climate of his promised land was bad. There could not be

a purer air. This was merely the seasoning which people who passed from

one country to another must expect. In November all would be well again.

But the rate at which the emigrants died was such that none of them

seemed likely to live till November. Those who were not laid on their

beds were yellow, lean, feeble, hardly able to move the sick and to

bury the dead, and quite unable to repel the expected attack of the

Spaniards. The cry of the whole community was that death was all around

them, and that they must, while they still had strength to weigh an

anchor or spread a sail, fly to some less fatal region. The men and

provisions were equally distributed among three ships, the Caledonia,

the Unicorn, and the Saint Andrew. Paterson, though still too ill to sit

in the Council, begged hard that he might be left behind with twenty or

thirty companions to keep up a show of possession, and to await the

next arrivals from Scotland. So small a number of people, he said,

might easily subsist by catching fish and turtles. But his offer was

disregarded; he was carried, utterly helpless, on board of the Saint

Andrew; and the vessel stood out to sea.

The voyage was horrible. Scarcely any Guinea slave ship has ever had

such a middle passage. Of two hundred and fifty persons who were on

board of the Saint Andrew, one hundred and fifty fed the sharks of the

Atlantic before Sandy Hook was in sight. The Unicorn lost almost all

its officers, and about a hundred and forty men. The Caledonia, the

healthiest ship of the three, threw overboard a hundred corpses. The

squalid survivors, as if they were not sufficiently miserable, raged

fiercely against one another. Charges of incapacity, cruelty, brutal

insolence, were hurled backward and forward. The rigid Presbyterians

attributed the calamities of the colony to the wickedness of Jacobites,

Prelatists, Sabbath-breakers, Atheists, who hated in others that image

of God which was wanting in themselves. The accused malignants, on the

other hand, complained bitterly of the impertinence of meddling fanatics

and hypocrites. Paterson was cruelly reviled, and was unable to

defend himself. He had been completely prostrated by bodily and

mental suffering. He looked like a skeleton. His heart was broken. His

inventive faculties and his plausible eloquence were no more; and he

seemed to have sunk into second childhood.

Meanwhile the second expedition had been on the seas. It reached Darien

about four months after the first settlers had fled. The new comers had

fully expected to find a flourishing young town, secure fortifications,

cultivated fields, and a cordial welcome. They found a wilderness. The

castle of New Edinburgh was in ruins. The huts had been burned. The site

marked out for the proud capital which was to have been the Tyre, the

Venice, the Amsterdam of the eighteenth century was overgrown with

jungle, and inhabited only by the sloth and the baboon. The hearts of

the adventurers sank within them. For their fleet had been fitted out,

not to plant a colony, but to recruit a colony already planted and

supposed to be prospering. They were therefore worse provided with

every necessary of life than their predecessors had been. Some feeble

attempts, however, were made to restore what had perished. A new fort

was constructed on the old ground; and within the ramparts was built a

hamlet, consisting of eighty or ninety cabins, generally of twelve feet

by ten. But the work went on languidly. The alacrity which is the effect

of hope, the strength which is the effect of union, were alike wanting

to the little community. From the councillors down to the humblest

settlers all was despondency and discontent. The stock of provisions was

scanty. The stewards embezzled great part of it. The rations were small;

and soon there was a cry that they were unfairly distributed. Factions

were formed. Plots were laid. One ringleader of the malecontents was

hanged. The Scotch were generally, as they still are, a religious

people; and it might therefore have been expected that the influence of

the divines to whom the spiritual charge of the colony had been confided

would have been employed with advantage for the preserving of order and

the calming of evil passions. Unfortunately those divines seem to have

been at war with almost all the rest of the society. They described

their companions as the most profligate of mankind, and declared that it

was impossible to constitute a presbytery according to the directions

of the General Assembly; for that persons fit to be ruling elders of

a Christian Church were not to be found among the twelve or thirteen

hundred emigrants. Where the blame lay it is now impossible to decide.

All that can with confidence be said is that either the clergymen must

have been most unreasonably and most uncharitably austere, or the laymen

must have been most unfavourable specimens of the nation and class to

which they belonged.

It may be added that the provision by the General Assembly for the

spiritual wants of the colony was as defective as the provision made for

temporal wants by the directors of the Company. Nearly one third of the

emigrants who sailed with the second expedition were Highlanders, who

did not understand a word of English; and not one of the four chaplains

could speak a word of Gaelic. It was only through interpreters that a

pastor could communicate with a large portion of the Christian flock

of which he had charge. Even by the help of interpreters he could not

impart religious instruction to those heathen tribes which the Church

of Scotland had solemnly recommended to his care. In fact, the colonists

left behind them no mark that baptized men had set foot on Darien,

except a few Anglo-Saxon curses, which, having been uttered more

frequently and with greater energy than any other words in our language,

had caught the ear and been retained in the memory of the native

population of the isthmus.

The months which immediately followed the arrival of the new comers were

the coolest and most salubrious of the year. But, even in those months,

the pestilential influence of a tropical sun, shining on swamps rank

with impenetrable thickets of black mangroves, began to be felt. The

mortality was great; and it was but too clear that, before the summer

was far advanced, the second colony would, like the first, have to

choose between death and flight. But the agony of the inevitable

dissolution was shortened by violence. A fleet of eleven vessels under

the flag of Castile anchored off New Edinburgh. At the same time an

irregular army of Spaniards, Creoles, negroes, mulattoes and Indians

marched across the isthmus from Panama; and the fort was blockaded at

once by sea and land.

A drummer soon came with a message from the besiegers, but a message

which was utterly unintelligible to the besieged. Even after all that we

have seen of the perverse imbecility of the directors of the Company, it

must be thought strange that they should have sent a colony to a remote

part of the world, where it was certain that there must be constant

intercourse, peaceable or hostile, with Spaniards, and yet should not

have taken care that there should be in the whole colony a single person

who knew a little Spanish.

With some difficulty a negotiation was carried on in such French and

such Latin as the two parties could furnish. Before the end of March

a treaty was signed by which the Scotch bound themselves to evacuate

Darien in fourteen days; and on the eleventh of April they departed, a

much less numerous body than when they arrived. In little more than four

months, although the healthiest months of the year, three hundred men

out of thirteen hundred had been swept away by disease. Of the survivors

very few lived to see their native country again. Two of the ships

perished at sea. Many of the adventurers, who had left their homes

flushed with hopes of speedy opulence, were glad to hire themselves out

to the planters of Jamaica, and laid their bones in that land of exile.

Shields died there, worn out and heart broken. Borland was the only

minister who came back. In his curious and interesting narrative, he

expresses his feelings, after the fashion of the school in which he

had been bred, by grotesque allusions to the Old Testament, and by a

profusion of Hebrew words. On his first arrival, he tells us, he found

New Edinburgh a Ziklag. He had subsequently been compelled to dwell in

the tents of Kedar. Once, indeed, during his sojourn, he had fallen

in with a Beer-lahai-roi, and had set up his Ebenezer; but in general

Darien was to him a Magor Missabib, a Kibroth-hattaavah. The sad story

is introduced with the words in which a great man of old, delivered

over to the malice of the Evil Power, was informed of the death of his

children and of the ruin of his fortunes: "I alone am escaped to tell

thee."