£16 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM 
break through the monopoly of the East India Company; 
they had secured the Parliamentary authorisation for which 
the English Company were pleading in vain; they opened 
an office and received subscriptions in London. They were 
preparing to compete in those trades which Englishmen 
prized most highly; while the Scottish project also aroused 
the Spaniards, and strained their relations with Englishmen, 
both with regard to the West Indian and the African trade. 
The schemes for trading with Archangel, which the pro- 
moters of the Darien Company cherished, and of carrying 
on the whale fishery, were opposed to the interests of the 
Russian and Greenland Companies. On every side the 
leading English trades were threatened; and the embroglios 
with the Spaniards which followed rendered it impossible 
for King William to support his northern subjects in their 
great undertaking. The seeds of failure were thus sown in 
the expedition from the first; and the Scottish indignation, 
which was roused by the narrative of the survivors who 
returned from Darien, was embittered by the sense of a 
pecuniary loss which the country could ill afford. The 
which English merchants were anxious to prevent the recurrence 
yp oo of similar attempts at competition. They had learned that 
eo ee ®& complete legislative Union of the two countries must be 
Union. procured at any cost’. 
The Dual Monarchy had not been a satisfactory arrange- 
ment from any point of view. There was ‘a trend, both of 
men and money, from the northern kingdom to the seat of 
government, which was not welcome in England, and which 
was bitterly denounced in Scotland. Their brief experience 
A.D. 1689 
—1776. 
awakened 
hostility 
and sus- 
picion 
1 For an excellent account of the Darien Company see J. H. Burton, History 
of Scotland from the Revolution, 1. c. viii. The Darien Company suffered from 
the want of experience of its directors, and from almost every one of the difficulties 
which were felt in the more powerful English companies. As a trading concern, 
the management was entirely ignorant of the right commodities for export; as 
a colony, there was no proper government which could restrain the disorderly and 
buccaneering elements ; and the eapital was quite insufficient for the projects they 
had in view. It had been raised with some difficulty in Scotland, and though the 
shares were all taken up, it was not a bona fide subscription, as some of the share- 
holders received promises from the Company guaranteeing them against actual 
loss (ib. 1. 297). The general impression which was abroad, that the tropics were 
fertile and wealthy, prevented the directors from sending out the supplies which 
mioht have saved the colonists from utter ruin.