She proceeded to do so with a courage much to be admired. A handsome house for the conducting of the Company’s business was erected; schemes for trade with Greenland, with Archangel, with the Gold Coast, were considered; the qualities of goods, possible |1695.| improvements of machinery, the extent of the production of foreign wares, were all the subject of careful inquiry. Under the glow of a new national object, old grudges and antipathies were forgotten. William Paterson, indeed, had set the pattern of a non-sectarian feeling from the beginning, for, writing from London to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh in July 1695, we find him using this strain of language, hitherto unwonted in Scotland: ‘Above all, it is needful for us to make no distinction of parties in this great undertaking; but of whatever nation or religion a man be, he ought to be looked upon, if one of us, to be of the same interest and inclination. We must not act apart in anything, but in a firm and united body, and distinct from all other interests whatsoever.’
The design of Paterson presents such indications of a great, an original, and a liberal mind, as to make the obscurity which rests on his history much to be regretted. The narrow, grasping, and monopolising spirit which had hitherto marked the commerce of most nations, and particularly the English and Spanish, was repudiated by this remarkable Scotsman; he proposed, on some suitable situation in Central America, to open a trade to all the world; he called on his countrymen not to try to enrich themselves by making or keeping other nations poor, but by taking the lead in a more generous system which should contemplate the good of all. He himself embarked the few thousand pounds which he possessed in the undertaking, and his whole conduct throughout its history exhibits him not merely as a man of sound judgment and reflection, but one superior to all sordid considerations.
For the further progress of the Company, the reader must be |1695.| referred onward to July 1698, when the first expedition sailed from Leith.
Further to improve the system of correspondence throughout the kingdom, the parliament passed an act for establishing a General Post-office in Edinburgh, under a postmaster-general, who was to have the exclusive privilege of receiving and despatching letters, it being only allowed that carriers should undertake that business on lines where there was no regular post, and until such should be established. The rates were fixed at 2s. Scots for a single letter within fifty Scottish miles, and for greater distances in proportion. It was also ordained that there should be a weekly post to Ireland, by means of a packet at Portpatrick, the expense of which was to be charged on the Scottish office. By the same law, the postmaster-general and his deputies were to have posts, and furnish post-horses along all the chief roads ‘to all persons,’ ‘at 3s. Scots for ilk horse-hire for postage for every Scots mile,’ including the use of furniture and a guide.[[149]] It would appear that, on this footing, the Post-office in Scotland was not a gainful concern, for in 1698 Sir Robert Sinclair of Stevenston had a grant of the entire revenue, with a pension of £300 sterling per annum, under the obligation to keep up the posts, and after a little while gave up the charge, as finding it disadvantageous.[[150]]
It is to be observed that this post-system for Scotland was provided with but one centre—namely, the capital. Letters coming from London for Glasgow arrived in Edinburgh in the first place, and were thence despatched westwards at such times as might be convenient. At one time, the letters were detained twelve hours in Edinburgh before being despatched to Glasgow! It seems at present scarcely credible that, until the establishment of Palmer’s mail-coaches in 1788, the letters from London to Glasgow passed by this circuitous route, and not by a direct one, although the western city had by that time a population of fifty thousand, and was the seat of great commercial and manufacturing industry.
July.
Glasgow—which in 1556 stood eleventh in the roll of the Scottish burghs, contributing but £202, while Edinburgh afforded £2650—appears, in the list now made up for a monthly cess to defray the expenses of the war, as second, Edinburgh giving £3880; Glasgow, £1800; Aberdeen, £726; Dundee, |1695.| £560; Perth, £360; Kirkcaldy, £288, &c. ‘To account for this comparative superiority of the wealth of Glasgow at this time, I must take notice that since before the Restoration the inhabitants had been in possession of the sale of both refined and raw sugars for the greater part of Scotland; they had a privilege of distilling spirits from their molasses, free from all duty and excise; the herring-fishery was also carried on to what was, at that time, thought a considerable extent; they were the only people in Scotland who made soap; and they sent annually some hides, linen, &c., to Bristol, from whence they brought back, in return, a little tobacco—which they manufactured into snuff and otherwise—sugars, and goods of the manufacture of England, with which they supplied a considerable part of the whole kingdom.’—Gibson’s History of Glasgow, 1777.
It is probable that the population did not then exceed twelve thousand; yet the seeds of that wonderful system of industry, which now makes Glasgow so interesting a study to every liberal onlooker, were already sown, and, even before the extension of English mercantile privileges to Scotland at the Union, there was a face of business about the place—a preparation of power and aptitude for what was in time to come. This cannot be better illustrated than by a few entries in the Privy Council Record regarding the fresh industrial enterprises which were from time to time arising in the west.
December 21, 1699.—A copartnery, consisting of William Cochran of Ochiltree, John Alexander of Blackhouse, and Mr William Dunlop, Principal of the University of Glasgow, with Andrew Cathcart, James Colquhoun, Matthew Aitchison, Lawrence Dunwoodies, William Baxter, Robert Alexander, and Mungo Cochran, merchants of Glasgow, was prepared to set up a woollen manufactory there, designing to make ‘woollen stuffs of all sorts, such as damasks, half-silks, draughts, friezes, drogats, tartains, craips, capitations, russets, and all other stuffs for men and women’s apparel, either for summer or winter.’ Using the native wool, they expected to furnish goods equal to any imported, and ‘at as easie a rate;’ for which end they are ‘providing the ablest workmen, airtiests, from our neighbouring nations.’ They anticipated that by such means ‘a vast soum of ready money will be kept within the kingdom, which these years past has been exported, it being weel known that above ten thousand pound sterling in specie hath been exported from the southern and western parts of this kingdom to Ireland yearly for |1695.| such stuffs, and yearly entered in the custom-house books, besides what has been stolen in without entering.’
In the same year, John Adam, John Bryson, John Alexander, and Harry Smith, English traders, had brought home to Glasgow ‘English workmen skilled to work all hardware, such as pins, needles, scissors, scythes, tobacco-boxes, and English knives, for which a great quantity of money was yearly exported out of the kingdom.’ They designed so far to save this sending out of money by setting up a hardware-manufactory in Glasgow. On their petition, the Privy Council extended to their designed work the privileges and immunities provided by statute for manufactories set up in Scotland.