The Scottish Parliament of May-July 1695, held while William was abroad,
saw the beginning of evils for Scotland. The affair of Glencoe was
examined into by a Commission, headed by Tweeddale, William's
Commissioner: several Judges sat in it. Their report cleared William
himself: Dalrymple, it was found, had "exceeded his instructions." Hill
was exonerated. Hamilton, who commanded the detachment that arrived too
late, fled the country. William was asked to send home for trial
Duncanson and other butchers who were with his army. The king was also
invited to deal with Dalrymple as he thought fit. He thought fit to give
Dalrymple an indemnity, and made him Viscount Stair, with a grant of
money, but did not retain him in office. He did not send the subaltern
butchers home for trial. Many years later, in 1745, the MacIans insisted
on acting as guards of the house and family of the descendant of Campbell
of Glenlyon, the guest and murderer of the chief of Glencoe.
Perhaps by way of a sop to the Scots, William allowed an Act for the
Establishment of a Scottish East India Company to be passed on June 20,
1695. He afterwards protested that in this matter he had been "badly
served," probably meaning "misinformed." The result was the Darien
Expedition, a great financial disaster for Scotland, and a terrible
grievance. Hitherto since the Union of the Crowns all Scottish efforts
to found trading companies, as in England, had been wrecked on English
jealousy: there had always been, and to this new East India Company there
was, a rival, a pre-existing English company. Scottish Acts for
protection of home industries were met by English retaliation in a war of
tariffs. Scotland had prohibited the exportation of her raw materials,
such as wool, but was cut off from English and other foreign markets for
her cloths. The Scots were more successful in secret and unlegalised
trading with their kinsmen in the American colonies.
The Scottish East India Company's aim was to sell Scottish goods in many
places, India for example; and it was secretly meant to found a factory
and central mart on the isthmus of Panama. For these ends capital was
withdrawn from the new and unsuccessful manufacturing companies. The
great scheme was the idea of William Paterson (born 1658), the
far-travelled and financially-speculative son of a farmer in
Dumfriesshire. He was the "projector," or one of the projectors, of the
Bank of England of 1694, investing 2000 pounds. He kept the Darien part
of his scheme for an East India Company in the background, and it seems
that William, when he granted a patent to that company, knew nothing of
this design to settle in or near the Panama isthmus, which was quite
clearly within the Spanish sphere of influence. When the philosopher
John Locke heard of the scheme, he wished England to steal the idea and
seize a port in Darien: it thus appears that he too was unaware that to
do so was to inflict an insult and injury on Spain. There is reason to
suppose that the grant of the patent to the East India Company was
obtained by bribing some Scottish politician or politicians unnamed,
though one name is not beyond probable conjecture.
In any case Paterson admitted English capitalists, who took up half of
the shares, as the Act of Patent permitted them to do. By December
William was writing that he "had been ill-served by some of my
Ministers." He had no notice of the details of the Act of Patent till he
had returned to England, and found English capitalists and the English
Parliament in a fury. The Act committed William to interposing his
authority if the ships of the company were detained by foreign powers,
and gave the adventurers leave to take "reparation" by force from their
assailants (this they later did when they captured in the Firth of Forth
an English vessel, the _Worcester_).
On the opening of the books of the new company in London (October 1695)
there had been a panic, and a fall of twenty points in the shares of the
English East India Company. The English Parliament had addressed William
in opposition to the Scots Company. The English subscribers of half the
paid up capital were terrorised, and sold out. Later, Hamburg
investments were cancelled through William's influence. All lowland
Scotland hurried to invest--in the dark--for the Darien part of the
scheme was practically a secret: it was vaguely announced that there was
to be a settlement somewhere, "in Africa or the Indies, or both."
Materials of trade, such as wigs, combs, Bibles, fish-hooks, and
kid-gloves, were accumulated. Offices were built--later used as an
asylum for pauper lunatics.
When, in July 1697, the secret of Panama came out, the English Council of
Trade examined Dampier, the voyager, and (September) announced that the
territory had never been Spain's, and that England ought to anticipate
Scotland by seizing Golden Island and the port on the mainland.
In July 1698 the Council of the intended Scots colony was elected, bought
three ships and two tenders, and despatched 1200 settlers with two
preachers, but with most inadequate provisions, and flour as bad as that
paid to Assynt for the person of Montrose. On October 30, in the Gulf of
Darien they found natives who spoke Spanish; they learned that the
nearest gold mines were in Spanish hands, and that the chiefs were
carrying Spanish insignia of office. By February 1699 the Scots and
Spaniards were exchanging shots. Presently a Scottish ship, cruising in
search of supplies, was seized by the Spanish at Carthagena; the men lay
in irons at Seville till 1700. Spain complained to William, and the
Scots seized a merchant ship. The English Governor of Jamaica forbade
his people, by virtue of a letter addressed by the English Government to
all the colonies, to grant supplies to the starving Scots, most of whom
sailed away from the colony in June, and suffered terrible things by sea
and land. Paterson returned to Scotland. A new expedition which left
Leith on May 12, 1699, found at Darien some Scots in two ships, and
remained on the scene, distracted by quarrels, till February 1700, when
Campbell of Fonab, sent with provisions in the _Speedy Return_ from
Scotland, arrived to find the Spaniards assailing the adventurers. He
cleared the Spaniards out of their fort in fifteen minutes, but the
Colonial Council learned that Spain was launching a small but adequate
armada against them. After an honourable resistance the garrison
capitulated, and marched out with colours flying (March 30). This
occurred just when Scotland was celebrating the arrival of the news of
Fonab's gallant feat of arms.
At home the country was full of discontent: William's agent at Hamburg
had prevented foreigners from investing in the Scots company. English
colonists had been forbidden to aid the Scottish adventurers. Two
hundred thousand pounds, several ships, and many lives had been lost. "It
is very like 1641," wrote an onlooker, so fierce were the passions that
raged against William. The news of the surrender of the colonists
increased the indignation. The king refused (November 1700) to gratify
the Estates by regarding the Darien colony as a legal enterprise. To do
so was to incur war with Spain and the anger of his English subjects. Yet
the colony had been legally founded in accordance with the terms of the
Act of Patent. While the Scots dwelt on this fact, William replied that
the colony being extinct, circumstances were altered. The Estates voted
that Darien _was_ a lawful colony, and (1701) in an address to the Crown
demanded compensation for the nation's financial losses. William replied
with expressions of sympathy and hopes that the two kingdoms would
consider a scheme of Union. A Bill for Union brought in through the
English Lords was rejected by the English Commons.
There was hardly an alternative between Union and War between the two
nations. War there would have been had the exiled Prince of Wales been
brought up as a Presbyterian. His father James VII. died a few months
before William III. passed away on March 7, 1702. Louis XIV.
acknowledged James, Prince of Wales, as James III. of England and Ireland
and VIII, of Scotland; and Anne, the boy's aunt, ascended the throne. As
a Stuart she was not unwelcome to the Jacobites, who hoped for various
chances, as Anne was believed to be friendly to her nephew.
In 1701 was passed an Act for preventing wrongous imprisonment and
against undue delay in trials. But Nevile Payne continued to be untried
and illegally imprisoned. Offenders, generally, could "run their
letters" and protest, if kept in durance untried for sixty days.
The Revolution of 1688-89, with William's very reluctant concessions, had
placed Scotland in entirely new relations with England. Scotland could
now no longer be "governed by the pen" from London; Parliament could no
longer be bridled and led, at English will, by the Lords of the Articles.
As the religious mainspring of Scottish political life, the domination of
the preachers had been weakened by the new settlement of the Kirk; as the
country was now set on commercial enterprises, which England everywhere
thwarted, it was plain that the two kingdoms could not live together on
the existing terms. Union there must be, or conquest, as under Cromwell;
yet an English war of conquest was impossible, because it was impossible
for Scotland to resist. Never would the country renew, as in the old
days, the alliance of France, for a French alliance meant the acceptance
by Scotland of a Catholic king.
England, on her side, if Union came, was accepting a partner with very
poor material resources. As regards agriculture, for example, vast
regions were untilled, or tilled only in the straths and fertile spots by
the hardy clansmen, who could not raise oats enough for their own
subsistence, and periodically endured famines. In "the ill years" of
William, years of untoward weather, distress had been extreme. In the
fertile Lowlands that old grievance, insecurity of tenure, and the
raising of rents in proportion to improvements made by the tenants, had
baffled agriculture. Enclosures were necessary for the protection of the
crops, but even if tenants or landlords had the energy or capital to make
enclosures, the neighbours destroyed them under cloud of night. The old
labour-services were still extorted; the tenant's time and strength were
not his own. Land was exhausted by absence of fallows and lack of
manure. The country was undrained, lochs and morasses covered what is
now fertile land, and hillsides now in pasture were under the plough. The
once prosperous linen trade had suffered from the war of tariffs.
The life of the burghs, political and municipal and trading, was little
advanced on the mediaeval model. The independent Scot steadily resisted
instruction from foreign and English craftsmen in most of the mechanical
arts. Laws for the encouragement of trades were passed and bore little
fruit. Companies were founded and were ruined by English tariffs and
English competition. The most energetic of the population went abroad,
here they prospered in commerce and in military service, while an
enormous class of beggars lived on the hospitality of their neighbours at
home. In such conditions of inequality it was plain that, if there was
to be a Union, the adjustment of proportions of taxation and of
representation in Parliament would require very delicate handling, while
the differences of Church Government were certain to cause jealousies and
opposition.