But now the self-reliant spirit of the Scottish people rose. If they could not share in the trade of England, they would establish a trade of their own. If they were not to be the partners of England, they would be her rivals. There can be no doubt that the schemes of the Scottish Company Trading to Africa and the Indies, on which the hopes of the country were placed, were rash and visionary. Scotland, it is true, was an independent country, with a Parliament of its own, with its own church, laws, coinage, and taxation, united to England by nothing except the Crown; and the powers which the Scottish Parliament gave to the Company brought this fact prominently into view, for the Company was to have the right of arming ships of war, building cities, making harbours and fortresses, waging war, and concluding alliances. But these very powers, which impressed on Scotsmen the fact that their country was independent, could not fail to rouse the alarm of Englishmen, and particularly of English traders. The royal assent had, indeed, been given to the statute by which the Company was created.[118] But the merchants of England were so alarmed, so jealous, so persuaded that their own trade was endangered, that we cannot be surprised that William, whose position depended entirely on the goodwill of England, acted as he did; especially when, at a time when he was deeply involved in continental politics, the Company, by sending the expedition to Darien, so seriously imperilled his relations with Spain. The sum of money which was actually lost by Scotland seems small in our day. The amount appears to have been about two hundred and twenty thousand pounds; but the Scotland of the seventeenth century was far less able to bear the loss of this sum, than the France of the nineteenth century was to bear the loss of all the millions which she, like her ancient ally, threw away upon the shores of the Gulf of Darien. And rich as England was, in comparison with Scotland, her condition at this time was not so prosperous as to make her liberal in dealing with other nations. War had brought increased taxation; and our enormous national debt, then beginning to accumulate, was a source of constant alarm. In the country districts farmers were suffering from a long period of agricultural depression, and rents were seldom paid in full. In the towns work was scarce, and the price of bread was rising. The carrying trade languished in spite of the monopoly which English shipping enjoyed under the Navigation Act, and the resistance to granting Scotland what she chiefly demanded, a share in the colonial trade, was increased by complaints which reached this country from across the seas. The Scottish shipowners, it was said, were landing goods in America, and underselling the English merchants; and to such an extent was this done, that Government was called upon to send out men-of-war to stop this illegal traffic.