emptions and restraints, or prohibitions;-to tax the nation for encouraging the export of corn, when cheap, but to discourage its export when dear; to settle the price of corn, and such like ;-raise or fall the value, name, or interest of money;-to restrain, prohibit, and disjoin the interest of his Majesty's subjects, not with other nations, but even with and in respect to one another. They will find, that all those, and many more pretended encouragements, are so far from the things they are called, that they are only intrigues to make private advantage from the ruins of the publick, and arise from the mistaken notions and conceits of unthinking men-who neither have temper, nor allow themselves time or opportunity to consider things as they are, but only take them as they seem to be,—a sort of presumptuous meddlers, who are continually apt to confound effects with causes, and causes with effects; and not to measure the trade or improvement of house, family, or country, and even that of the universe, not by the nature and extent of the thing, but only by their own narrow and mistaken conceptions thereof."

The memorial, from which the oregoing passages are extracted, is preserved in MS. in the British Museum; and endeavours are making to have it published, along with all Paterson's remarkable works upon political economy, and with a careful account of his still more remarkable career.

Whilst his views were urged with much effect upon King William, Paterson was busily engaged in Scotland. He there urged the Darien Company to persevere in a prudent maintenance of their adventure; and he devised for Scotland a plan of Colonial government and trade, analogous to what had produced the best results in England, under the advice of Lord Clarendon, of Locke, and Lord Somers. The Duke of Queensberry, whom he had warmly supported in favour of the Union, writes of his proceedings at this period, to Carstares, the king's confidential secretary :—

"The African Company have appointed seven of their number to confer with Mr. Paterson; but he is against moving anything this session, and tells me he thinks he has gained some considerable men to his opinions. He acts with great diligence and affection to the king and the country. He has no bye-ends."*

At the same time Mr. John Stewart writes thus concerning him, to the same eminent person :—

"The hearts of all good countrymen are bent upon an union with England They have projectors now at work making plans of trade. The design is a national trade, so that all Scotland will become one entire company of merchants. It proposes to raise above £300,000 in two years: with this stock they aree-1. To trade to both the Indies, and settle colonies in the terms of the act establishing their company. 2. To raise manufactories throughout all the kingdom. 3. To pursue their fishing to greater profit in the markets

*Carstares, p. 630.

of Europe than any other fishing company in Christendom can do. 4. To employ all the poor of the nation; so that in two years not a beggar shall be seen in all the kingdom, and that without an act of slavery. 5. To pay back to any of the subscribers of the African stock his money if demanded, so that nobody can complain of loss that way."

This account was written by Mr. Stewart to Carstares, on the 3d Sept. 1700; the next letter on the 14th Sept., adds,

"Mr. Paterson is very tenacious and stiff as to his project; and, indeed, he has a good genius. Some of his notions are very mataphysical, though I am not fool enough to be persuaded that they are not true, but practicable. As to his council of trade, I know not how it is to be for the king to constitute such an office. It is true twelve angels might be well enough trusted with powers and privileges absolutely necessary, but they are too much for men; for while they act in concert with a African Company, and it is impossible they can have different interests, they are too powerful even for the king; they are in a manner a committee of parliament constantly sitting; they have all the power, thought, and treasure of the kingdom in their hands. In short, nothing but time and experience can tell us what the consequences of such a constitution may be. So that I have no manner of hope that this project will take. But I think still that it is fit to encourage the projector, who indeed has a prodigious genius; and a vast extended thought valeat quantum; valere potest. It is possible the wisdom of Parliament may cull out some things to be of use to the country; and a means to accommodate matters betwixt the king and his people."

The serious nature of the matters to be accommodated, will be inferred from a single paragraph of Mr. Secretary Vernon's correspondence. He says

"The king acquainted the council to-day with the great tumult and riot that has been lately in Edinburgh, upon the news they received of their victory at Darien. They had bonfires and illuminations, and in those houses that wanted the latter the rabble broke all the windows, particularly at my Lord Argyle's, Lord Annandale's, and Lord Seafield's house. They endeavour to break open the prisons where some were committed for scandalous libels (on the Darien business). The prisons being too strong, they went to the Lord Advocate's, and forced him to sign a discharge for the men, upon which they were delivered to them. The city guards were routed by them, two or three being killed But they dispersed before the regulars, or when they began to come to themselves."

”米

The accommodation was complete, when Louis the Fourteenth not only put his grandson upon the throne of Spain, but even acknowledged a pretender as King of England; and thereupon the great war, which humbled the French on the Continent, was prepared for by William, in 1700, with extraordinary spirit. His unexpected death, at the beginning of the next year, deprived him of the victory over France, which it had been the object of his life to secure, and of which Marlborough won the glory.

* Vernon Correspondence, vol. iii, p. 99.

The plans of Paterson, for making efforts in the West Indies and Spanish America, corresponded with those of King William in Europe.

The unfriended Scot, who, in the year 1693, could induce parliament to found the Bank of England, and the monied men of London to subscribe its funds in nine days-who, upon that great success, instead of sitting down in honourable ease, actually built up the Scottish African Company; and who would certainly have firmly established the Darien colony, if he had been its governor ; -who, out of the ruins of a broken enterprise, could prepare a design that promised to retrieve it, and produce, perhaps, the greatest amount of good to England, as well as to Scotland, that ever sprang from one man's mind;-who, baffled by the unhappy death of King William, did not sink discouraged into obscurity, but passed the remainder of a long life in literary pursuits, guided by the same enlightened principles as had ennobled his earlier career;—such a man was well worthy of the high esteem in which his contemporaries held him; and should not be forgotten by posterity.

His less known, later labours are of much interest. Instead of returning to Scotland a needy, neglected man, he lived in London from 1701 to his death, in 1711, associated with men of letters, and with eminent politicians. By his will, registered in Doctor's Commons, it appears that he possessed at the last a fortune of £7,000, no inconsiderable sum in the days of Queen Anne.

In the year 1703 we find him founding a Public Library of Trade and Political Economy at Westminster. The Catalogue is preserved in the British Museum: the contents show his various studies; and the terms of the benefactor's plan proves his sagacity and his judicious views. This library anticipated, by thirty years, the Commercial Library of Hamburgh, stated before Mr. Ewart's Committee to have been the first of such special collections made in any country.

He was a member of the Wednesday Night Club, in Friday Street, whose conferences seem to have been like the proceedings of our Anti-Corn-Law League. In fact, the literary labours and the financial plans of Paterson were among the best antecedents of the doctrines of Adam Smith, which now promise to rule the world; as his enterprise of Darien long guided the policy of this country, in its attacks on Spanish America, under Hosier, Vernon, Anson, and Nelson. The development of the immense resources of

this region, is destined, in our day, to have a new and a better direction. The Treaty of Washington of 1850, has laid the foundation of friendly arrangements by all the maritime powers, to respect the independence of the Central American States; and by the combination of the capital and science of the Old and New Worlds, to promote the execution of gigantic ship-passages, in order to unite the two oceans, and indefinitely extend commerce and civilisation in the channels contemplated by the founder of the Scottish Colony of Darien.

The last remarkable incident in the life of Paterson, was of a character not without parallel in modern times; it was spread in dark tints, over the formidable portion of the last twelve years of his life. He had been a great loser by the ruin of the Darien colony; and a special act of Parliament of the United Kingdom gave him a title to a share of the indemnity voted for such losses, out of the equivalent fund. Legal difficulties impeded the payment of the money under that statute; but at length another bill passed the House of Commons, after rigorous inquiries before committees, awarding him the sum of £18,421 10s. 103d. in consideration of his public services, and his well deserving, both in England and Scotland. This bill was thrown out in the House of Lords, upon no grounds that are intelligible at the present day. The Scottish Court of Exchequer had supported the claims as voted by the House of Commons; and if the jurisdiction of the Privy Council shall ever be carried out upon the old principles of the constitution, as a court of appeal, open of right to all claimants upon the crown, injustice, such as he suffered, could not occur. For want of this jurisdiction, the cases are not unfrequent, which, like William Paterson's, show how strongly intrigue taints the fountain of justice and honour among us.

There is a tradition in the family of Paterson, that large sums of money, originating in unappropriated portions of his estate, are still available to his heirs. His fair fame belongs to us all; and it may be hoped, that means will be taken to secure to it a monument commensurate with the merit of the man, and the great public importance of his works. To such efforts as his, Scotland owes much of the social improvement that has made her people industrious, and highly civilised at home; and capable of relieving their domestic pressures, by carrying industry and high civilisation all over the globe.

ART. VII.-Political Satires under George the Third.

The Rolliad, in two Parts; Probationary Odes for the Laureateship; and Political Miscellanies: with Criticisms and Illustrations. Revised, corrected, and enlarged by the Original Authors. London: Printed for J. Ridgway, York Street, St. James's Square. 1795. (8vo, fourth edition.) Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin: comprising the celebrated Political and Satirical Poems, Parodies, and Jeux-d'esprit of the Right Hon. George Canning, the Earl of Liverpool, Marquis Wellesley, the Right Hon. J. H. Frere, G. Ellis, Esq., W. Gifford, Esq., and others. New and Revised Edition, with Explanatory Notes. [Edited by CHARLES EDMONDS.] London : G. Willis, Great Piazza, Covent Garden. 1852. (12mo.)

THE

HE literature of politics is a very distinct and a very peculiar one, and is not undeserving of our attention; for, though full of exaggeration and falsehood, it alone gives us an insight into an important part of historical knowledge, that of contemporary political sentiment, and it often throws a light on political motives and causes for which we may look elsewhere in vain. It is a literature which, wherever it exists, strongly marks the independence of the people, and the freedom of the press, yet it varies much, according to times and circumstances. In England, under the commonwealth it was a bitter war of controversial pamphlets; after the restoration it degenerated into mere personal slander and defamation; and this character was unfortunately more or less preserved until the commencement of the present century. With George II, political caricatures began to be numerous and influential, and these and political satire took a grand development under the eventful reign of George III. Use breeds familiarity, and we derive a strong argument in favour of the freedom of the press from the contrast between the extraordinary influence of such productions in the age when the government tried to overawe the press, and their utter harmlessness at present, when the press is altogether unshackled. When we cast a retrospective glance over the political writings of different ages, we cannot but feel the great worthlessness of this literature in general, as a literature, but at times-moments of extraordinary excitement-a few political writings have appeared which deserved to be remembered, and perhaps republished, although