As many as 22 works, all of them anonymous, are attributed to Paterson. These are classified by Bannister under six heads, as dealing with (I) finance, (2) legislative union, (3) colonial enterprise, (4) trade, (5) administration, (6) various social and political questions. Of these the following deserve special notice: (I) Proposals and Reasons for constituting a Council of Trade 0700. This was a plan to develop the resources of Scotland through the agency of a council, which, with the revenues de rived from duties on sales, lawsuits, successions, etc., was to foster trade, revive the Darien scheme, relieve the poor, and regulate the currency. (2) A Proposal to plant a Colony in Darien to protect the Indians against Spain, and to open the Trade of South America to all Nations (1701). This details the advantages to be derived by Great Britain from the Darien scheme. (3) Wednes day Club Dialogues upon the Union (1706). These were imagi nary conversations in a club in London about the union with Scot land. Paterson's opinions were put into the mouth of a speaker called May, who sets forward the terms which would make the union acceptable to Scotsmen. (4) Along with this another dis cussion of the same imaginary body, An Inquiry into the State of the Union of Great Britain and the Trade thereof (1717), may be taken. This was a consideration of the union and a discussion as to the best means of paying off the national debt—a subject which occupied a great deal of Paterson's attention during the later years of his life.
Paterson's plans were vast and magnificent, but he was no mere dreamer. Each design was worked out in minute detail, each was possible and practical. The Bank of England was a stupendous success. The Darien expedition failed from hostile attacks and bad arrangements. But the original design was that the English and Dutch should be partakers in it, and, if this had occurred, and the arrangements, against many of which Paterson in letter after letter in vain protested, had not been as they were, Darien might have been to Britain another India. Paterson was a zealous free trader long before Adam Smith, and his remarks on finance and his argument against an inconvertible paper-currency, though then novel, now hold a place of economic orthodoxy. Paterson's works are excellent in form and matter; and few men who have written so much have said so little about themselves.
See S. Bannister, Life of W. Paterson (1858) ; Paterson's Works, by S. Bannister (3 vols. 1859) ; W. Pagan, The Birthplace and Parentage of W. Paterson ; Eng. Hist. Review, xi. 260. The brilliant account of the Darien in the fifth volume of Macaulay's History is incorrect and misleading ; that in Burton's Hist. of Scotland (vol. viii. ch. 84) is much truer. Consult also the memoir in Paul Coq, La Monnaie de banque (1863), and J. S. Barbour, A History of William Paterson and the Darien Company (1907). For a list of fugitive writings on Paterson see Poole's Index of Periodicals. (F. WT.; X.)