Scottish people have ever been noted for their caution, frugality, and prudence, and not prone to engage in any speculation unless based on the soundest business principles. Although thus characterized, yet this people engaged in the most disastrous speculation on record; established by act of the Scottish parliament, and begun by unprecedented excitement. The leading cause which impelled the people headlong into this catastrophe was the ruination of the foreign trade of Scotland by the English Navigation Act of 1660, which provided that all trade with the English colonies should be conducted in English ships alone. Any scheme plausibly presented was likely to catch those anxious to regain their commercial interests, as well as those who would be actuated to increase their own interests. The Massacre of Glencoe had no little share in the matter. This massacre, which occurred February 13, 1692, is the foulest blot in the annals of crime. It was deliberately planned by Sir John Dalrymple and others, ordered by king William, and executed by Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon, in the most treacherous, brutal, atrocious, and bloodthirsty manner imaginable, and perpetrated without the shadow of a reasonable excuse--infancy and old age, male and female alike perished. The bare recital of it is awful; and the barbarity of the American savage pales before it. In every quarter, even at court, the account of the massacre was received with horror and indignation. The odium of the nation rose to a great pitch, and demanded that an inquiry be made into this atrocious affair. The appointment of a commission was not wrung from the unwilling king until April 29, 1695. The commission, as a whole, acted with great fairness, although they put the best possible construction on the king's order, and threw the whole blame on Secretary Dalrymple. The king was too intimately connected with the crime to make an example of any one, although through public sentiment he was forced to dismiss Secretary Dalrymple. Not one of those actually engaged in the perpetration of the crime were dismissed from the army, or punished for the butchery, otherwise than by the general hatred of the age in which they lived, and the universal execration of posterity. The tide of feeling set in against king William, and before it had time to ebb the Darien Scheme was projected. The friends of William seized the opportunity to persuade him that some freedom and facilities of trade should be granted the Scotch, and that would divert public attention from the Glencoe massacre. Secretary Dalrymple also was not slow to give it the support of his eloquence and interest, in hopes to regain thereby a part of his lost popularity.