The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 2

T >> Thomas Babington Macaulay >> The History of England from the Accession of James II, Vol. 2

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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.

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