It was not necessary for the members of the Company of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies to look very far for an example.

In some highland districts, not more than a hundred miles from Edinburgh, dwelt clans which had always regarded the authority of King, Parliament, Privy Council and Court of Session, quite as little as the aboriginal population of Darien regarded the authority of the Spanish Viceroys and Audiences.

Yet it would surely have been thought an outrageous violation of public law in the King of Spain to take possession of Appin and Lochaber.

And would it be a less outrageous violation of public law in the Scots to seize on a province in the very centre of his possessions, on the plea that this province was in the same state in which Appin and Lochaber had been during centuries?
So grossly unjust was Paterson's scheme; and yet it was less unjust than impolitic.

Torpid as Spain had become, there was still one point on which she was exquisitely sensitive.