onduct 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