However, we have to deal with Paterson chiefly as the founder of the Bank of England, and with the long and fierce battle he had to fight to accomplish his object, for there was great opposition to it from interest and prejudice. Paterson had been long in Holland, and when he propounded his scheme of a Bank of England, the people objected to it as coming from Holland; ’they had too many Dutch things already,’ just as now there is a prejudice against things ’made in Germany.’ Moreover, they doubted the stability of the Government of William III. At last, however, they consented to the Bank, on the express condition that £1,200,000 should be subscribed and lent to the Government. The money was subscribed in ten days. The Bank Act was obtained in spite of all opposition, which perhaps would have prevailed had not Queen Mary, acting on the instruction of William (then in Flanders), during a six hours’ sitting, carried the point, and the company received their royal charter of incorporation in July, 1694. Almost as soon as it had been established the Bank was called upon to assist the Government in the re-coinage of the silver money. The notes of the new Bank were destined to fill up the vacuum occasioned by the calling in of the old coin, but as the notes were payable on demand, they were returned faster than coin could be obtained from the Mint; a crisis ensued, during which the notes of the Bank fell to a discount of 20 per cent. But the Bank passed safely through its difficulties, as also through the troubles caused by the South Sea Bubble. The opposition in the first crisis was due chiefly to the goldsmiths, who detested the new corporation because it interfered with their system of private banking, hitherto monopolized by them. Paterson’s advice was of the greatest assistance in his capacity of director, yet such was the animus against him that, as we mentioned above, in 1695 he sold out the stock he held (£2,000), which from the first was a director’s qualification, and retired from his office. But he did not withdraw from public life. The Darien Expedition already referred to was organized by him in 1698, and its disastrous results were, as we have shown, in nowise attributable to him, and this was, in fact, eventually admitted by the nation, Parliament in 1715 passing an Act awarding him an indemnity of upwards of £18,000 for his losses in that enterprise. In other ways Paterson continued to interest himself in matters affecting the public welfare; he rendered his Sovereign signal services by the wise and shrewd advice he gave him during the latter part of his troubled reign; he published many tracts on the management of the National Debt and the system of auditing public accounts; he was a zealous advocate of Free Trade, and his views on the subject of taxation were far ahead of the ideas of his day. His undoubtedly great talents, his thorough honesty and genuine patriotism, fully entitle him