and the conduct of individual members of the ministry. On the first of these points the King did not act wisely. Unable to understand the insular politics in favour with the English, he insisted that the ministry should propose a standing army of 20,000 men. Afraid to introduce a Bill which they knew they could not carry, the ministry suffered the initiative to slip from their grasp, and a private individual was allowed to propose that the number of troops should be further lessened to 7000, and that all those 7000 should be born Englishmen. In spite of the efforts of theDismissal of the Dutch guards. ministry the Bill was carried, and William found himself compelled to order the departure of his favourite Dutch guards. Hurt to the quick, he seriously formed the intention of quitting England. He even drew up his farewell speech, and was only moved to remain by the earnest prayers of Somers and by his own returning wisdom.
Assured of their majority, the Opposition proceeded to attack the late ministry. Their favourite object was Montague, who had laid himself open to their assaults by the pride and luxury which he had exhibited in his good fortune, and still more by the indecent rapacity with which he seized on the valuable place of the Auditorship of the Exchequer, worth at least £4000 a year; this he placed in the hands of his brother, to be held until he should want it. The next victim was Russell, Lord Orford, whose administration only escaped censure by a single vote. And before the session closed, the third point, that of grants of Crown lands, was touched upon in a way which produced much after disaster. The method used on this occasion illustrates a point Rivalry between the two Houses. deserving of notice. The Revolution had placed the supreme power in the hands of Parliament; but Parliament itself consists of two elements, of two Houses drawn from different classes. Besides the general party struggles, besides the frequent contests between King and Parliament, and subsequently between Parliament and people, there was therefore a class rivalry between the two Houses, which had shown itself already on more than one occasion during the reign, and was rendered more prominent now by the fact that the party feeling in the Upper House was on the whole decidedly Whig. The weapon which the Commons intended to use in this strife was their exclusive right of introducing money Bills. Those Bills the Upper House had the power of rejecting entire, but not of amending. The Commons now "tacked" or appended to the Bill for the Land Tax a clause appointing seven Commissioners to inquire into the manner in which the forfeited land in Ireland had been granted out. This obnoxious clause the Lords were compelled to pass, or to reject the Bill entirely, and thus stop the supplies. Though keenly feeling the coercion put upon them, by a plan which would have proved fatal to the Upper House had not the good feeling of the nation and the strength of popular opinion ultimately compelled the Commons to abandon it, the Lords passed the Bill, feeling probably that the present occasion was scarcely important enough for a great constitutional struggle. The Money Bill having been passed, the King, in some anger, prorogued the Parliament (May 4).
As usual, when Parliament was not sitting, William withdrew to Holland, a habit which, now that the war no longer necessitated his presence there, increased his unpopularity in England, and the session of Parliament which he returned to meet in November 1699 was still more stormy than the last.
The Darien scheme.
The discontent in England was backed up by more serious discontent in Scotland. The whole of that nation might be now reckoned among the enemies of the Court. For, during the recess, on the 5th of October, certain news had reached England of the failure of the great Darien scheme, and the complete destruction of those wild hopes of wealth and greatness which had been for the last four years buoying up the Scotch nation. Paterson, the same man whose scheme for the Bank of England had in the hands of Montague proved so successful, was the originator of this disastrous project. He had persuaded himself that the natural wealth of a country has nothing to do with its prosperity. The commercial cities of the ancient world, and Venice and Holland in modern times, had risen to greatness and wealth without any territorial possessions of importance. He believed that he could reproduce this phenomenon in the case of Scotland. The scheme of Columbus had been to introduce the wealth of the East by a short and direct route into Europe, and thus to destroy the traffic of the Venetians. He had found his plan thwarted by the interposition of America; and the discovery of a passage round the Cape of Good Hope had turned all men's attention in that direction, and had been the great source of wealth both to the Dutch and Portuguese. But the plan of Columbus had never been quite forgotten, and Paterson now thought to renew it by establishing a line of communication across the Isthmus of Darien. The Scotch were to colonize and occupy the isthmus, which would become, in the view of the projector, the great emporium of the whole Eastern trade. Although he did not explain the details of his scheme, it was listened to with enthusiasm by his fellow-countrymen; and in 1695, an extraordinary Act passed the Scotch Parliament, and received the assent of the Lord High Commissioner, authorising the formation of a Corporation, half the capital of which was to be held by Scotchmen, with the monopoly of the trade with Asia, Africa, and America for thirty-one years. With the exception of foreign sugar and tobacco, all its imports were to be duty free. Every servant of the Company was free from imprisonment and arrest. The Company was authorized to take possession of unoccupied territories and exercise legal rights, and the King promised to obtain satisfaction at the public charge if foreign powers assaulted it. Subscriptions to the amount of £200,000 and upwards were speedily forthcoming, and a branch of the Company established itself in London. There, however, the absurdities of the plan were at once discovered, and it met with a very cold reception. Any colony, to be useful, must be either in America or in the Spice Islands; now interference in America would not be tolerated by Spain, nor would Holland look on quietly at the occupation of the Spice Islands; a maritime war was in fact inevitable; Scotland, singlehanded, could scarcely hope to carry on such a war, and England would almost infallibly be drawn into it, and this on behalf of a Company which, by changing Scotland into a free port, would virtually make it an enormous centre for smuggling to the extreme detriment of English trade. The attention of the King was drawn to the subject. He expressed his entire disapprobation of the scheme, and dismissed the Lord High Commissioner and the Secretary; but the law was made and could not be rescinded. In 1698, in the midst of wild enthusiasm, 1200 colonists set out from Leith, with Paterson among them, and reached Darien in safety, and there established their colony, but almost immediately came into contact with the neighbouring Spanish governor, and the inevitable war began. At first, however, the reports were favourable, and in the following year a new armament of four ships and 1800 colonists left Scotland for Caledonia, as the new settlement was called. They had not been gone long before news arrived at New York that the colony no longer existed, and that the wretched remnant of its inhabitants had sought refuge in New England. In fact, the climate had proved eminently unhealthy, in spite of the assertions of Paterson. Provisions had failed, and, worn out and enfeebled, the colonists, feeling themselves entirely unable to repell the assaults of Spain, determined to withdraw. After miserable suffering, a few of them reached New York, and the second expedition arrived in Caledonia to find only uninhabited ruins. They determined upon reoccupying these, rebuilt the fort, and during the few healthy months continued, though with heavy losses, to carry out their operations. But before long a Spanish fleet appeared before the town, and an army, marching across the isthmus from Panama, blockaded it on the land side. Resistance was impossible. Already 300 of the new-comers had died, the survivors promised to depart within a fortnight, and on the 11th of April left the colony for ever. The disaster was regarded by the Scotch as a national injury on the part of England. The Company had throughout excited great anger in the Southern kingdom; the colonial governors had done all they could to discourage the colony when it arrived, and the Scotch were ready to trace this opposition to national jealousy—to attribute it even to William's partiality for his Dutch subjects, whose trade might have been injured. In truth, the whole business was a proof, as William pointed out to the House of Lords, of the difficulty of managing two countries with different interests under one Crown, and the necessity of a closer union between the nations.
New Parliament Nov. 16, 1699.
It was thus, supported by the discontent of Scotland, that the malcontents of Parliament resumed the question of the management of the royal property. After a fruitless attack upon Somers, who had indeed received a grant, but one against which no reasonable complaint could be made, they proceeded to follow up the work of the last session, and to act upon the recommendation of the seven Commissioners who had been appointed by the tacked clause of the