case of M. de Lesseps's
Panama Canal--'a strange thing happened.' The celebrated philosopher,
Mr. John Locke, and the other members of a committee of the English
Board of Trade, advised the English Government to plagiarise the
Scottish project, and seize the section of the Isthmus of Panama on
which the Scots meant to settle. This was not done; but the Dutch
Usurper, far from backing the Scots company, bade his colonies hold no
sort of intercourse with them. The Scots were starved out of their
settlement. The few who remained fled to New York and Jamaica, and
there, perishing of hunger, were refused supplies by the English
colonial governors. A second Scottish colony succumbed to a Spanish
fleet and army, and the company, with a nominal capital of 400,000_l._
and with 220,000_l._ paid up, was bankrupt. Macaulay calculates the
loss at about the same as a loss of forty millions would have been to
the Scotland of his own day; let us say twenty-two millions.

We remember the excitement in France over the Panama failure.
Scotland, in 1700, was even more furious, and that led to the hanging
of Captain Green and his men. There were riots; the rioters were
imprisoned in the Heart of Midlothian--the Tolbooth--the crowd
released them; some of the crowd were feebly sentenced to the pillory,
the public pelted them--with white roses; and had the Chevalier de St.
George not been a child of twelve, he would have had a fair chance of
recovering his throne. The trouble was tided over; William III. died
in 1702. Queen Anne came to the Crown. But the bankrupt company was
not dead. Its charter was still legal, and, with borrowed money, it
sent out vessels to trade with the Indies. The company had a vessel,
the 'Annandale,' which was seized in the Thames, at the instance of
the East India Company, and condemned for a breach of that company's
privileges.

This capture awakened the sleeping fury among my fiery countrymen
(1704). An English ship, connected with either the English East India
Company or the rival Million Company, put into Leith Road to repair.
Here was a chance; for the charter of the Scots company authorised
them 'to make reprisals and to seek and take reparation of damage done
by sea and land.' On the strength of this clause, which was never
meant to apply to Englishmen in Scottish waters, but to foreigners of
all kinds on the Spanish Main, the Scottish Admiralty took no steps.
But the company had a Celtic secretary, Mr. Rod