The scheme proved a dismal failure. England and Holland opposed the new colony; the East India Company treated it as a rival, and Spain was actively hostile. The climate did the rest. Before the close of 1699 "New Edinburgh" was deserted, and the colonists, decimated by want of provisions and disease, set sail for New York. To make matters worse, a second company meanwhile had sailed from Scotland, where the utmost enthusiasm still prevailed; but the new arrivals found the town deserted, and themselves at the mercy of the Spanish warships. Mad with rage at the lack of success of their national adventure, the Scotch openly accused the English Government of treachery, declaring that its conduct in withholding food supplies was as discreditable to it as was the butchery of Mac Ian and his clan at Glencoe in 1692, when neither old man nor child was spared, and fugitives were allowed to perish of hunger and exposure in the mountains. Paterson's faith in Panama must have been profound. His wife died in the new colony, and he himself suffered severely in health; yet, after his return towards the end of 1699, directly his health began to improve, we read of his approaching William with a fresh Darien venture. The King naturally refused to risk a second disaster, and Paterson, like all great speculators who have risked everything and lost, could not again persuade the public to share his enthusiasm, for that mysterious entity seldom trusts a man after a cloud has obscured his "star." Once his spell of so-called good luck is broken, the public desert him in a body, when the adventurer, if he be wise, retires into obscurity with his spoil. Paterson lived to discover that it is only a rising star, radiating success, that can obtain a sufficiently large following to finance a great scheme, and though he strove manfully to promote the new venture, his sanguine predictions were received sceptically. Nor did his subsequent schemes meet with a better reception. But he must still have retained some influence, for, after the Act of Union in 1707, he was returned to Parliament by a Scotch burgh. His chief claim to distinction, however, undoubtedly rests upon the fact that he founded the Bank of England, of which he was appointed one of the first directors. The Bank of England, from its inception down to the present day, has never been a Government institution. It was originally simply a company that advanced money to and transacted business for the Government, which, in return, granted it certain privileges and concessions; but the connection between the Government and the Bank was so close, and their interests so identical, that public opinion connected the one indissolubly with the other. From this conception sprang the erroneous impression that the Bank is a Government establishment, when, in reality, it is no more so than is the National Provincial Bank of England or the London and County Bank.