The English parliament, with a spirit worthy of the darkest ages, and the most barbarous nations, proceeded to declare lord Belhaven, William Paterson, and twenty-two other members of the company guilty of a high misdemeanour. Those of their own people who had become partners in the company were compelled to withdraw their subscriptions. Upwards of two hundred thousand pounds sterling were afterwards subscribed to the scheme by the merchants of Holland and Hamburg, and the English resident at the latter city, Sir Paul Rycault, was instructed to present a remonstrance, on the part of the king, to the magistrates, complaining of the countenance they had given to the commissioners of the Darien company. The answer of the city was worthy of itself in its best days. "They considered it strange that the king of England should dictate to them, a free people, how, or with whom they were to engage in the arrangements of commerce, and still more so, that they should be blamed for offering to connect themselves in this way with a body of his own subjects incorporated under a special act of parliament." From this interference, however, the Hamburgers, aware that the company was to be thwarted in all its proceedings by the superior power of England, lost confidence in the scheme, and finally withdrew their subscriptions. The Dutch, too, equally jealous of commercial rivalry with the English, and influenced perhaps by the same motives with the Hamburgers, withdrew their subscriptions also, and the company was left to the unassisted resources of their own poor and depressed country. Nothing could exceed the eagerness with which all classes of the Scottish people hastened to enrol themselves in the magnificent copartnery now forming. Every burgh, every city, and almost every family of any consequence became shareholders. Four hundred thousand pounds were subscribed; an astonishing sum when it is known that at that time the circulating capital of the kingdom did not exceed eight hundred thousand pounds sterling. To this enthusiasm a variety of causes contributed. The scheme of Paterson was politically good. It was drawn up with great ability, and promised important results in a moral and religious, as well as in a commercial point of view. Many of the subscribers, indeed, were influenced solely by religious motives, as they considered the setting up of a church, regularly constituted, on that continent, the most likely means for spreading the gospel among the natives, and as affording facilities for that purpose which could not in any other way be obtained. But it must also be admitted that the scheme, having become a national mania, was not left to work its way by its own intrinsic merits. The scene of the intended operations became the subject of numberless pamphlets, wherein fancy was much more largely employed than fact. The soil was represented as rich, and teeming with the most luxuriant fertility; the rivers as full of fish, and their sands sparkling with gold; the woods smiling in perpetual verdure, at all times ringing with the melody of spring, and loading every breeze that swept over them with the most delightful odours.

Having completed their preparations, and the public authorities having assured them of protection and encouragement, the colony, in presence of the whole city of Edinburgh, which poured out its inhabitants to witness the scene, embarked at Leith, from the roads of which they sailed on the 26th of July, 1698. The fleet consisted of five ships, purchased at Hamburg or Holland—for they were refused even the trifling accommodation of a ship of war which was laid up at Burntisland—and were named the Caledonia, St Andrew, Unicorn, Dolphin, and Endeavour; the two last being yachts laden with provisions and military stores. The colony consisted of twelve hundred men; three hundred of them being young men of the best Scottish families. Among them were also sixty officers who had been thrown out of employment by the peace which had just been concluded, and who carried along with them the troops they had commanded; all of whom were men who had been raised on their own estates, or on those of their relations. Many soldiers and sailors, whose services had been refused—for many more than could be employed had offered themselves—were found hid in the ships, and when ordered ashore, clung to the ropes, imploring to be allowed to go with their countrymen without fee or reward. The whole sailed amidst the praises, the prayers, and the tears of relations, friends, and countrymen; "and neighbouring nations," says Dalrymple, "saw with a mixture of surprise and respect the poorest nation of Europe sending forth the most gallant colony which had ever gone from the old to the new world." The parliament of Scotland met in the same week that the expedition for Darien sailed, and on the 5th of August they presented a unanimous address to the king, requesting that he would be pleased to support the company. The lord president, Sir Hugh Dalrymple, and Sir James Stuart, lord advocate, also drew out memorials to the king in behalf of the company, in which they proved their rights to be irrefragable, on the principles both of constitutional and public law. All this, however, did not prevent orders being sent out by the English ministry to all the English governors in America and the West Indies, to withhold all supplies from the Scottish colony at Darien, and to have no manner of communication with it, either in one shape or another. Meanwhile, the colony proceeded on its voyage without anything remarkable occurring, and on the 3d of November landed between Portobella and Carthagena, at a place called Acta, where there was an excellent harbour, about four miles from Golden Island. Having obtained the sanction of the natives to settle among them, they proceeded to cut through a peninsula, by which they obtained what they conceived to be a favourable site for a city, and they accordingly began to build one, under the name of New Edinburgh. They also constructed a fort in a commanding situation, for the protection of the town and the harbour, which they named St Andrew; and on the country itself they imposed the name of Caledonia. The first care of the council which had been appointed by the company, but of which Mr Paterson was unfortunately not a member, was to establish a friendly correspondence with the native chiefs, which they found no difficulty in doing. To the Spanish authorities at Carthagena and Panama they also sent friendly deputations, stating their desire to live with them upon terms of amity and reciprocal intercourse. On the 28th of December, 1698, the council issued a proclamation, dated at New Edinburgh, to the following effect:— "We do hereby publish and declare, That all manner of persons, of what nation or people soever, are and shall from henceforward be equally free, and alike capable of the said properties, privileges, protections, immunities, and rights of government, granted unto us; and the merchants and merchant ships of all nations may freely come to and trade with us without being liable in their in their persons or goods to any manner of capture, confiscation, seizure, forfeiture, attachment, arrest, restraint, or prohibition for, or by reason of any embargo, breach of the peace, letters of marque, or reprisals, declaration of war with any foreign prince, potentate, or state, or upon any other account or pretence whatsoever. And we do hereby not only grant, concede, and declare a general and equal freedom of government and trade to those of all nations who shall hereafter be of or concerned with us, but also a full and free liberty of conscience in matters of religion, so as the same be not understood to allow, connive at, or indulge the blaspheming of God’s holy name, or any of his divine attributes, or of the unhallowing or profaning the Sabbath day; and, finally, as the best and surest means to render any government successful, durable, and happy, it shall, by the help of Almighty God, be ever our constant and chiefest care, that all our further constitutions, laws, and ordinances be consonant and agreeable to the Holy Scriptures, right reason, and the examples of the wisest and justest nations; that from the righteousness thereof we may reasonably hope for and expect the blessings of prosperity and increase." So far all was well, but the want of a leading spirit, of one who could overawe the refractory, and of summary laws for their punishment, soon began to be felt; Mr Paterson, before sailing, had been refused a position, and the event showed the grossness of that error. In the original articles of the company, it had been agreed that he should be allowed two per cent on the stock, and three per cent on the profits, but he had given up both these claims long before leaving Scotland. "It was not," he said, "suspicion of the justice or gratitude of the company, nor a consciousness that his services could ever become useless to them, but the ingratitude of some individuals experienced in life, which made it a matter of common prudence in him to ask a retribution for six years of his time, and ten thousand pounds spent in promoting the establishment of the company. But now," he continues, "that I see it standing upon the authority of parliament, and supported by so many great, and good men, I release all claim to that retribution; happy in the noble concession made to me, but happier in the return which I now make for it." The whole management was vested in a council of seven, under regulations, the fifth of which ran thus—"That after their landing and settlement as aforesaid, they, the council, shall class and divide the whole freemen inhabitants of the said colony into districts, each district to contain at least fifty, and not exceeding sixty freemen inhabitants, who shall elect yearly any one freeman inhabitant whom they shall think fit to represent them in a parliament or council general of the said colony, which parliament shall be called or adjourned by the said council as they see cause; and being so constitute, may, with consent of the said council, make and enact such rules, ordinances, and constitutions, and impose such taxes as they think fit and needful for the good of the establishment, improvement, and support of the said colony; providing alway, that they lay no further duties or impositions of trade than what is after stated." One of the councillors, writing at this time to the directors at home, says, "We found the inconvenience of calling a parliament, and of telling the inhabitants that they were freemen so soon. They had not the true notion of liberty. The thoughts of it made them insolent, and ruined command. You know that it’s expressly in the ‘Encouragements,’ that they are to serve for three years, and at the three years’ end to have a division of land." It was the opinion of this director, that no parliament should have been called till at least the three years of servitude had expired. Even then, from the characters of the settlers, who had not been selected with that care which an experiment of such vast consequence demanded, there might have existed causes for delaying the escape. Among the better class, there were too many young men of birth. These were inexperienced and wholly unfit for exercising authority, and equally ill adapted for submitting to it. Among the lower class were many who had been opposed to the Revolution, and who had resorted to the colony purely from dissatisfaction with the government at home. These, instead of submitting with patience to the privations and labour necessary in that state of society in which they were now placed, would gladly have laid aside the mattock and the axe, and have employed themselves in plundering incursions upon the Indians or the Spaniards. The subscribers to the scheme were so numerous, that the idle, the unprincipled, and profligate had found but too little difficulty in attaching themselves to the infant colony. Those who were nominated to the council, too, had been selected without judgment. "There was not," Paterson writes in a letter to Mr Shields, "one of the old council fitted for government, and things were gone too far before the new took place."

The colony was first established at the beginning of winter, the best season for Europeans first encountering the climate of Darien; and the first letter from the council to the directors thus expresses the satisfaction of the colonists with their new destination:—"As to the country, we find it very healthful; for though we arrived here in the rainy season, from which we had little or no shelter for several weeks together, and many sick among us, yet we are so far recovered, and in so good a state of health, as could hardly anywhere be expected among such a number of men together. In fruitfulness this country seems not to give place to any in the world; for we have seen several of the fruits, as cocoa-nuts, barillas, sugar-canes, maize, oranges, &c., &c., all of them, in their kinds, the best anywhere to be found. Nay, there is hardly a foot of ground but may be cultivated; for even upon the very tops and sides of the hills, there is commonly three or four feet deep of rich earth, without so much as a stone to be found therein. Here is good hunting and fowling, and excellent fishing in the bays and creeks of the coast; so that, could we improve the season of the year just now begun, we should soon be able to subsist of ourselves; but building and fortifying will lose us a whole year’s planting." This was, however, no more than all of them must have foreseen; and they never doubted of obtaining more provisions than they could want, from the West India islands, or from the American colonies. Orders, however, as has already been noticed, were sent out after them to all the English governors, prohibiting all communication with them. These proclamations were rigidly adhered to, and the unfortunate Scottish colonists were denied those supplies which had seldom been withheld from lawless smugglers, buccaneers, and pirates. In addition to this, which was the principal source of all their misfortunes, those who superintended the equipment of the expedition had, through carelessness or design, furnished them with provisions, part of which were uneatable; the consequence of which was, that the colony had to be put on short allowance, when the sickly season was thinning their numbers, and bringing additional duty on those who were in health. In this emergency, their Indian friends exerted themselves on their behalf; putting to shame their Christian brethren, who, from a mean jealousy, were attempting to starve them; and they might still have done better, had not insubordination broken out among themselves, and a conspiracy been formed, in which some of the council were implicated, to seize one of the vessels, and to make their escape from the colony After matters had come this length, Paterson and others became councillors; a measure which had the effect of checking the turbulence of the discontented. The new council also despatched one of their own number to Britain, with an address to the king, and a pressing request to send them out supplies of provisions, ammunition, and men. On receiving this despatch, the directors lost no time in sending out the requisite supplies. They had already sent despatches and provisions by a brig, which sailed from the Clyde in the end of February, 1699, but which unhappily never reached her destination. On the arrival in Britain of another of their number, Mr Hamilton, who was accountant-general to the colony, and whose absence was highly detrimental to its interests, the Olive Branch, captain Jamieson, and another vessel, with three hundred recruits and store of provisions, arms, and ammunition, were despatched from Leith roads on the 12th of May, 1699. Matters in the colony were in the meantime getting worse; and on the 22nd of June, they came to the resolution of abandoning the place within eight months of the time they had taken possession of it. The projector himself resisted this measure manfully. He, however, fell ill, in mind and body, but recovered the full powers of his mind at New York, whence he returned to Scotland, to make his report to the company, and give them his best advice regarding the further prosecution of their undertaking. Two of their captains, Samuel Veitch and Thomas Drummond, remained at New York. The Olive Branch, the vessel alluded to as having gone out to the colony with recruits and provisions, was followed by a fleet of four ships, the Rising Sun, Hope, Duke Hamilton, and Hope of Borrowstonness, with thirteen hundred men. These ships all sailed from the Kyle of Bute, on the 24th of September, 1699, and reached Caledonia Bay on the 30th of November following. With this fleet went out William Veitch, son of the reverend William Veitch of Dumfries, and brother to Samuel already mentioned. Individuals were also sent out by various conveyances, with bills of credit for the use of the colony. Everything now, however, went against them. The Olive Branch and her consort having arrived in the harbour of New Edinburgh, the recruits determined to land, and repossess themselves of the place, the huts of which they found burnt down, and totally deserted. One of their ships, however, took fire, and was burnt in the harbour, on which the others set sail for Jamaica. When the fleet which followed arrived in November, and, instead of a colony ready to receive them, found the huts burnt down, the fort dismantled, and the ground which had been cleared overgrown with shrubs and weeds, with all the tools and implements of husbandry taken away, they were at a loss what to do. A general cry was raised in the ships to be conducted home, which was encouraged by Mr James Byers, one of the new councillors, who seems to have been himself deeply impressed with that dejection of spirit which, as a councillor, it was his duty to suppress. Veitch, however, assisted by captain Thomas Drummond, who had come out in the Olive Branch, and had taken up his residence among the natives till the fleet which he expected should arrive, succeeded in persuading the men to land. As the Spaniards had already shown their hostility, and, having been defeated by a detachment of the colonists in the preceding February, were preparing for another attack—encouraged, no doubt, by the treatment which the colony had met with from the English government—Drummond proposed an immediate attack on Portobella, which they could easily have reduced, and where they might have been supplied with such things as they were most in want of. In this he was cordially seconded by Veitch, but was prevented by the timidity of his colleagues, and the intrigues of Byers, who at length succeeded in ejecting him from the council. Two ministers, Messrs James and Scott, went out with the first expedition, but the one died on the passage, and the other shortly after landing in New Caledonia. The council having written home to the directors, regretting the death of their ministers, and begging that others might be sent to supply their place, the commission of the General Assembly of the church of Scotland, at the particular desire of the board of directors, sent out the reverend Messrs Alexander Shields, (the well-known author of the "Hind let Loose," "Life of Renwick," &c.,) Borland, Stobo, and Dalgleish. These persons sailed in the last fleet. They were instructed, on their arrival, with the advice and concurrence of the government, to set apart a day for solemn thanksgiving, to form themselves into a presbytery, to ordain elders and deacons, and to divide the colony into parishes, that thus each minister might have a particular charge. After which it was recommended to them, "so soon as they should find the colony in case for it, to assemble the whole Christian inhabitants, and keep a day together for solemn prayer and fasting, and with the greatest solemnity and seriousness to avouch the Lord to be their God, and dedicate themselves and the land to the Lord." The church of Scotland took so deep an interest in the colony of Darien, that the commission sent a particular admonition by the ministers, of which the following may be taken as a specimen:—"We shall, in the next place, particularly address ourselves to you that are in military charge, and have command over the soldiery, whether by land or sea. It is on you, honoured and worthy gentlemen, that a great share of the burden of the public safety lies. You are, in some respects, both the hands and the eyes of this infant colony. Many of you have lately been engaged in a just and glorious war, for retrieving and defending the protestant religion, the liberties and rights of your country, under the conduct of a matchless prince. And now when, through the blessing of the Lord of hosts, his and your arms have procured an honourable peace at home, you, and others with you, have, with much bravery, embarked yourselves in a great, generous, and just undertaking, in the remote parts of the earth, for advancing the honour and interest of your native country. If in this you acquit yourselves like men and Christians, your fame will be renowned both abroad and at home." The ministers found the colony in circumstances very different from what the address of the commission naturally supposed; and it was but few of their instructions they were able to carry into effect. Two of them, however, preached on land, and one on board the Rising Sun, every Sabbath day. But, in addition to the unfavourable aspect of their affairs, the irreligion and licentiousness of the colonists oppressed their spirits and paralyzed their efforts. With the view of forming an acquaintance with the natives, they undertook a journey into the interior, accompanied by a lieutenant Turnbull, who had some slight knowledge of the Indian language. They spent several nights in the cabins of the natives, by whom they were received with great kindness; and on their return, brought back to the colonists the first notice of the approach of the Spaniards. When apprised of all the circumstances, the directors felt highly indignant at the conduct of those who, upon such slight grounds, had left the settlement desolate; and whose glory, they said, it ought to have been to have perished there, rather than to have abandoned it so shamefully. In their letters to their new councillors and officers, they implored them to keep the example of their predecessors before their eyes as a beacon, and to avoid those ruinous dissensions and shameful vices, on which they had wrecked so hopeful an enterprise. "It is a lasting disgrace," they add, "to the memories of those officers who went in the first expedition, that even the meanest planters were scandalized at the licentiousness of their lives, many of them living very intemperately and viciously for many months at the public charge, whilst the sober and industrious among them were vigilant in doing their duty. Nor can we, upon serious reflection, wonder if an enterprise of this nature has misgiven in the hands of such as, we have too much reason to believe, neither feared God nor regarded man." They also blamed the old council heavily for deserting the place without ever calling a parliament, or general meeting of the colony, or in any way consulting their inclinations, but commanding them to a blind and implicit obedience, which is more than they ever can be answerable for. "Wherefore," they continue, "we desire you would constitute a parliament, whose advice you are to take in all important matters. And in the meantime you are to acquaint the officers and planters with the constitutions, and the few additional ones sent with Mr Mackay, that all and every person in the colony may know their duty, advantages, and privileges." Alarmed by the accounts which they soon after received from Darien, the council-general of the company despatched a proclamation, declaring "that it shall be lawful to any person, of whatever degree, inhabiting the colony, not only to protest against, but to disobey and oppose any resolution to desert the colony;" and, "that it shall be death; either publicly or privately, to move, deliberate, or reason upon any such desertion or surrender, without special order from the council-general for that effect. And they order and require the council of Caledonia to proclaim this solemnly, as they shall be answerable." Before this act was passed in Edinburgh, however, New Caledonia was once more evacuated. The men had set busily to the rebuilding the huts, and repairing the fort; but strenuous efforts were still made in the council to discourage them, by those who wished to evacuate the settlement. Veitch was with difficulty allowed to protest against some of their resolutions; and for opposing them with warmth, captain Drummond was laid under arrest.

Speaking of Drummond, Mr Shields says, "Under God, it is owing to him, and the prudence of captain Veitch, that we have staid here so long, which was no small difficulty to accomplish." And again, "If we had not met with Drummond at our arrival, we had never settled in this place, Byers and Lindsay being averse from it, and designing to discourage it from the very first; Gibson being indifferent, if he got his pipe and dram; only Veitch remained resolved to promote it, who was all along Drummond’s friend, and concurred with his proposal to send men against the Spaniards at first, and took the patronizing as long as he could conveniently, but with such caution and prudence, as to avoid and prevent animosity and faction, which he saw were unavoidable, threatening the speedier dissolution of this interest, if he should insist on the prosecution of that plea, and in opposition to that spate that was running against Drummond. But now Finch coming, who was Drummond’s comrade and fellow-officer in Lorn’s regiment in Flanders, he is set at liberty." This was the son of colonel Campbell of Finch, who, with three hundred of his own men, had come out and joined this last party about two months after their arrival. The Spanish troops meantime, from Panama and Santa Maria, conducted through the woods by negroes, were approaching them. They had advanced, to the number of sixteen hundred men, as far as Tubucantee, in the immediate neighbourhood of the colony, when Finch marched against them with two hundred men, and defeated them in a slight skirmish, in which he was wounded. The victory, which at one time would have been of signal service to the colony, was now unavailing; a fleet of eleven ships, under the command of the governor of Carthagena, Don Juan Pimienta, having blocked up the harbour, and landed a number of troops, who, advancing along with the party which had found their way through the woods, invested the fort. Cut off from water, reduced by sickness, and otherwise dispirited, the garrison was loud in its demands for a capitulation, and the council had no other alternative but to comply with it. Finch being laid up at the time with a fever, Veitch conducted the treaty, and was allowed honourable terms. The inhabitants of the colony having gone on shipboard with all that belonged to them, they weighed anchor on the 11th of April, 1700, and sailed for Jamaica, after having occupied New Caledonia somewhat more than four months. The Hope, on board of which was captain Veitch, and the greater part of the property, was wrecked on the rocks of Colorades, on the western coast of Cuba. Veitch, however, was dead before this accident happened. The Rising Sun was wrecked on the bar of Carolina, and the captain and crew, with the exception of sixteen persons who had previously landed, were lost. Of the few survivors, some remained in the English settlements, some died in Spanish prisons; and of the three thousand men that at different periods went out to the settlement, perhaps not above twenty ever regained their native land.

In this melancholy manner terminated the greatest attempt at colonization ever made by Scotland. The conception was splendid, the promise great and every way worthy of the experiment; and but for the jealousy of the English and the Dutch, more particularly the former, it must have succeeded. The settlers, indeed, were not all well selected; the measures actually pursued fatal to success; and, above all, the council were men of feeble minds, utterly unqualified to act in a situation of such difficulty as that in which they came to be placed. Had the wants of the Scottish settlers been supplied by the English colonies, which they could very well have been, even with advantage to the colonies, the first and most fatal disunion, and abandonment of their station, could not have happened; and had they been acknowledged by their sovereign, the attack made upon them by the Spaniards, which put an end to the colony, would never have been made. Time would have smoothed down the asperities among the settlers themselves; experience would have corrected their errors in legistion; and New Caledonia, which remains to this day a wilderness, might have become the emporium of half the commerce of the world.

Mr Paterson, not disheartened by the failure of his Darien project, instead of repining, revived the scheme in a form to induce England, whose hostility had hitherto thwarted all his measures, to share in the undertaking, and he succeeded; when the sudden death of king William stopped the design; and queen Anne’s ministers, who approved of it, had no vigour to carry it out.

Mr Paterson died at an advanced age, in poor circumstances. After the Union, he claimed upon the Equivalent Money for the losses he had sustained at Darien, and in 1715 obtained his indemnity. Had Paterson’s scheme succeeded, and it was no fault of his that it did not, his name had unquestionably been enrolled among the most illustrious benefactors of his species; and if we examine his character in the light of true philosophy, we shall find it greatly heightened by his failure. We never hear from him a single murmur. When disappointed or defeated, he did not give way to despair, but set himself coolly and calmly to another and still greater undertaking. When this failed, through the injustice of those who ought to have been his protectors, and the imbecility of those whom he ought to have commanded, he only sought to improve his plan. There is one part of his character which, in a man of so much genius, ought not to pass unnoticed: "He was void of passion; and he was one of the very few of his countrymen who never drank wine."