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 [Sidenote: 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 [Sidenote: 1695.] referred onward to July 1698, when the first expedition sailed from Leith.