held in almost as great detestation. The accustomed gambler is a wretch who preys on the weaknesses of others for the sake of unworked-for gains; and whatever be his station, his character is associated with that of the meanest of mankind.

So injurious is gambling to the interests of society, that it has been rendered illegal in most countries, and is now never heard of as a vice openly practised. At the same time, other kinds of enterprise, which it is difficult to separate abstractly from chance money games, have been always less or more practised, much to the loss and scandal of the general community. We here allude to certain great public schemes of adventuring money in jointstock concerns. The union of capital, by shares, in order to execute undertakings of a useful kind, which the wealth of no single individual could accomplish, is one of the valuable inventions of modern times; and to it do we owe nearly all banks, life and fire insurance establishments, canals, railways, and many other economic arrangements and institutions. But everything good is liable to abuse. Besides carefully-considered and every way desirable joint-stock projects, schemes of the most visionary nature have been originated and supported. Sometimes the schemes, though visionary, were got up from no bad intention, being merely a consequence of inconsiderate enthusiasm; but in others, if not originating in deception, they were continued with a reckless disregard of consequences, and evidently for the sake of immediate and unjustifiable returns. They were, in fact, equivalent to the worst species of gambling.

The avaricious desire of being speedily rich is at the foundation of these hideous speculative manias; and national embarrassment, besides individual impoverishment, has been the invariable consequence; yet so little does one generation profit by the errors and sufferings of its predecessors, that a mania for speculation has become almost of periodical occurrence. Believing that it may be useful to describe the rise, and progress, and results of a few of the principal manias which have taken place in Europe, the following particulars have been collected; commencing with an account of the Darien Scheme, which, however, had a fair commercial basis, and is not entitled to be classed with projects of a dishonest character.

THE DARIEN SCHEME.

THE history of this scheme extends from 1695 to 1701, in the reign of William III. The scene was Scotland, a country at the time emerging from civil strife into the tranquillity of industrious occupation. The founder of the project was William

Paterson, a man of sagacity and genius. Little is known of his early life, except that he was educated for the church. Being of a restless disposition, and having a violent propensity to travel, he crossed the Atlantic, apparently with the intention of spending his life as a missionary among the American Indians. It would seem, however, that this intention was soon abandoned, and that Paterson commenced the roving life of an adventurer or bucaneer, accompanying such men as Dampier and Wafer in their voyages among the West Indian islands, and their travels on the American mainland, probably also taking part in the incessant warfare which the bucaneers carried on against the Spanish colonists in those regions. By this means Paterson, being a man of education and of an inquiring turn of mind, gained a thorough acquaintance with the geography of the great isthmus which connects North and South America, with the nature of the soil and its productions, and with the manner in which the various tribes who inhabited it stood related to each other and to the Spaniards. The advantages of the Isthmus of Darien, as the site of a great commercial capital, could not fail to strike him. He believed that it would be quite possible to make the narrow isthmus a channel of trade with the Pacific, and thus bring into a focus the commerce of the East Indies in connection with his native country. Animated with this idea, he proposed the scheme of a company to various parties in Scotland, England, and the continent; but with no effect. At length his project gained the favourable consideration of the celebrated Fletcher of Saltoun, a patriot, and a man inclined to take extreme views. The two Scotchmen became acquainted with each other in London; Fletcher listened attentively to Paterson's explanation of his scheme, and in a short time became as sanguine and enthusiastic in regard to it as himself. Resolved, however, to secure the whole benefits of the project for his native country, he persuaded Paterson to accompany him to Scotland, where he introduced him to the Marquis of Tweeddale, then minister for Scotland, to Lord Stair and Mr Johnston, the two secretaries of state, and to the lord advocate, Sir James Stewart. At this time public feeling in Scotland was much excited regarding the recent massacre of Glencoe; and both King William and the minister Stair, who had been implicated in the bloody transaction, were exceedingly unpopular. Paterson's scheme, it was conceived, would divert the attention of the Scotch from this unfortunate occurrence; and if the king were to afford it his countenance, his popularity would revive. Accordingly, Stair supported the scheme with all his influence and eloquence, as one from which Scotland would reap incalculable benefits; and in June 1695, the Scottish parliament passed an act establishing " a company trading to Africa and the Indies, with power to plant colonies, and build cities, towns, or forts, in places not in the possession of any other European power, with the consent of the natives "-the company to have an exemption for

twenty-one years from all duties and impositions. The king was prevailed on to grant a charter in the terms of this act.

The Darien Scheme having thus received the sanction of public authority, Paterson opened the subscription. Instantaneously the whole country was thrown into a ferment. "The frenzy of the Scotch nation to sign the Solemn League and Covenant did not exceed the rapidity with which they ran to subscribe to the Darien Company. The nobility, the gentry, the merchants, the people, the royal burghs, without the exception of one, and most of the other public bodies, subscribed. Young women threw their little fortunes into the stock; widows sold their jointures to get the command of money for the same purpose. Almost in an instant £400,000 were subscribed in Scotland, although it is known that at that time there was not above £800,000 of cash in the kingdom." Extensive premises were built in the neighbourhood of Bristo Port, Edinburgh, to serve as an office for the Company, and as warehouses in which to store up the rich merchandise, the silks, the gold, the spices which the Company's ships were to bring from across the Atlantic.

The frenzy was not confined to Scotland. Colonel Erskine, son of Lord Cardross, and Mr Haldane of Gleneagles, both men of character and fortune, being deputed to receive subscriptions in England and on the continent, such was the eagerness for shares that in a few days the English subscribed £300,000, and the Dutch and Hamburgers £200,000, although the scheme had been rejected when offered to them by Paterson a short time before.

The Darien Scheme was therefore launched with fair auspices. Its prospects, however, were soon overcast. The English merchants, and especially the East India Company, took the alarm, and began to manifest the utmost jealousy against the proposed expedition. The national antipathy between England and Scotland was not yet extinct; and the absurd idea was generally entertained, that any increase of prosperity to Scotland arising from an increase of trade, must inflict a positive damage on England. To such a height did these narrow views reach, that on the 13th of December 1695, the Houses of Lords and Commons presented a joint address to King William, expostulating with him on the establishment of the Darien Company, declaring that it would be detrimental, if not altogether fatal, to the interests of the East India Company. Scotland, they said, will become, as it were, one free port for East Indian goods; the Scotch will then be able to undersell us; capital will all rush northward into Scotland, and England will languish and pine away. Nor was this all. The House of Commons went so far as to impeach some Englishmen who had taken part in the establishment of the new Company; and, more ridiculous still, to impeach some Scotchmen, among whom was Lord Belhaven, although these, as subjects of another realm, were beyond their jurisdic

tion. This decided opposition on the part of the two Houses was successful. The king, in his answer to the address, expressed his sympathy with its views, and said "that the king had been ill-served in Scotland, but hoped some remedies might still be found to prevent the evils apprehended." To show that he really meant what he said, William immediately dismissed his Scotch ministers, and sent instructions to the English envoy at Hamburg to present a memorial to the senate, in which he declared that the Darien Company had not his sanction, and warned the senate against having any connection with it. The independent Hamburg merchants returned the following spirited answer:"We look upon it as a very strange thing that the king of Britain should offer to hinder us, who are a free people, from trading with whom we please; but we are amazed to find him wishing to hinder us from entering into engagements with his own subjects in Scotland, to whom he has lately given such large privileges by so solemn an act of parliament." "But merchants," says the old account, "though mighty prone to passion, are easily intimidated;" and the consequence of this illiberal interference with the Darien Scheme was, that the Dutch, the Hamburgers, and the English, for the most part withdrew their subscriptions, and the Scotch were left to depend almost entirely to their own scanty resources for the planning of the projected colony on the Isthmus of Darien.

Instead of being dispirited by the withdrawal of such a large proportion of the subscriptions, the Scotch became more convinced of the soundness of the scheme, and regarded the opposition of the English merchants as a testimony in its favour. The old spirit of ill-will to the English incited them as strongly to persist in the enterprise as, a hundred and fifty years before, it had incited them to fight the English in the field. Moreover, Paterson's vehement eloquence, and gorgeous descriptions of the spot where he proposed to found the colony, completely seized the national imagination. "Trade," he said," will beget trade, money will beget money, the commercial world will no more want work for their hands, but will rather want hands for their work. Darien, the door of the seas, the key of the universe, will enable its possessors to become the legislators of both worlds, and the arbitrators of commerce. The settlers at Darien will acquire a nobler empire than Alexander or Cæsar, without fatigue, expense, or danger, as well as without incurring the guilt and bloodshed with which conquerors are usually chargeable." With these golden prospects before them, who could hesitate? Six ships, of from thirty-six to sixty guns, were ordered to be built at Hamburg; for so resolute was the king against the scheme, that he refused to let the Company have the use of a ship-of-war then lying at Burntisland. Twelve hundred men, including three hundred youths of the best Scottish families, volunteered themselves as the first emigrants-the founders of the

great future capital of the world. So universal was the enthusiasm, that even the most cautious politicians in the kingdom participated in it, and were shareholders in the Company.

On the 26th of July 1698, five ships, with twelve hundred men on board, and provisions for a year, set sail from Leith. "The whole city of Edinburgh," we are told, “poured down upon Leith to see the colony depart, amid the tears, and prayers, and praises of relations and friends. Many seamen and soldiers, whose services had been refused because more had offered themselves than were needed, were found hid in the ships, and when ordered ashore, clung to the ropes and timbers, imploring to go, without reward, with their companions." The fleet reached its destination in two months; and the colonists, disembarking, entered with spirit on their new duties. Had they chosen, they might, it is said, have marched from the most northern extremity of Mexico to the most southern extremity of Chili, and overturned the whole Spanish empire in America, so much superior were they in strength and discipline to the degenerate Spaniards; but cautious against giving a bad impression of their aims and intentions, they paid scrupulous attention to the claims which other nations made to certain parts of the American territory, sent friendly messages to the Spanish governors, and began to bargain with the native Indians for the lands on which they meant to settle. The country which they purchased they called New Caledonia. The name of the spot where they disembarked was Acta: this, which was to be the site of the new city, they called New Edinburgh, and a fort which they built in the neighbourhood they called St Andrew. A narrow neck of land which ran into the sea was cut through, so as to make the harbour more safe and convenient; and on a mountain behind the fort was placed a watch-tower, commanding a prospect of immense range. Here, it is said, the Highlanders, of whom there were a great many in the expedition, used to walk, to enjoy the mountain air, and think of their far-away Scottish hills. The colony having been thus constituted, its first public act was to issue a declaration of perfect freedom of trade, and perfect toleration in religious matters, to all the citizens of New Edinburgh, and all foreigners who should enter the port.

The news of the formation of the colony at Darien reached Edinburgh on the 25th of March 1699, and “ was celebrated with the most extravagant rejoicings. Thanks were publicly offered up to God in all the churches of the city. At a public graduation of students, which the magistrates attended in their robes, the professor of philosophy pronounced a harangue in favour of the settlement, the legality of which was maintained in the printed theses of the students. It seems even to have been a common subject of declamation from the pulpit."*

* Arnot's History of Edinburgh.