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.