Meanwhile the internal government of the colony was organised according to a plan devised by the directors at Edinburgh.  The settlers were divided into bands of fifty or sixty; each band chose a representative; and thus was formed an assembly which took the magnificent name of Parliament.  This Parliament speedily framed a curious code.  The first article provided that the precepts, instructions, examples, commands and prohibitions expressed and contained in the Holy Scriptures should have the full force and effect of laws in New Caledonia, an enactment which proves that those who drew it up either did not know what the Holy Scriptures contained or did not know what a law meant.  There is another provision which shows not less clearly how far these legislators were from understanding the first principles of legislation.  “Benefits received and good services done shall always be generously and thankfully compensated, whether a prior bargain hath been made or not; and, if it shall happen to be otherwise, and the Benefactor obliged justly to complain of the ingratitude, the Ungrateful shall in such case be obliged to give threefold satisfaction at the least.”  An article much more creditable to the little Parliament, and much needed in a community which was likely to be constantly at war, prohibits, on pain of death, the violation of female captives.

By this time all the Antilles and all the shores of the Gulf of Mexico were in a ferment.  The new colony was the object of universal hatred.  The Spaniards began to fit out armaments.  The chiefs of the French dependencies in the West Indies eagerly offered assistance to the Spaniards.  The governors of the English settlements put forth proclamations interdicting all communication with this nest of buccaneers.  Just at this time, the Dolphin, a vessel of fourteen guns, which was the property of the Scotch Company, was driven on shore by stress of weather under the walls of Carthagena.  The ship and cargo were confiscated, the crew imprisoned and put in irons.  Some of the sailors were treated as slaves, and compelled to sweep the streets and to work on the fortifications.  Others, and among them the captain, were sent to Seville to be tried for piracy.  Soon an envoy with a flag of truce arrived at Carthagena, and, in the name of the Council of Caledonia, demanded the release of the prisoners.  He delivered to the authorities a letter threatening them with the vengeance of the King of Great Britain, and a copy of the Act of Parliament by which the Company had been created.  The Castilian governor, who probably knew that William, as Sovereign of England, would not, and, as Sovereign of Scotland, could not, protect the squatters who had occupied Darien, flung away both letter and Act of Parliament with a gesture of contempt, called for a guard, and was with difficulty dissuaded from throwing the messenger into a dungeon.  The Council of Caledonia, in great indignation, issued letters of mark and reprisal against Spanish vessels.  What every man of common sense must have foreseen had taken place.  The Scottish flag had been but a few months planted on the walls of New Edinburgh; and already a war, which Scotland, without the help of England, was utterly unable to sustain, had begun.