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