![[PANAMA] [ANONYMOUS=HODGES, JAMES?]. A defence of the Scots abdicating Darien: including an answer to the defence of the Scots settlement there.](/sites/default/files/styles/auction_slider/public/images/lots/660/1491660.jpg?itok=g8idXDi1)
Lot Details
Lot 78
[PANAMA] [ANONYMOUS=HODGES, JAMES?]. A defence of the Scots abdicating Darien: including an answer to the defence of the Scots settlement there.
N.p. [but Edinburgh]: [s.n.], 1700. Later three-quarters mottled calf, tan paper sides. 7 1/8 x 4 1/8 inches (18.5 x 11.75 cm); [20], 60, 145-165, 167-168, [1] pp. (i.e. mispaginated as issued, all extant copies thus, text continuous), collating A-N^[4]. Light binding wear, small tear with loss to foot of title, just touching the rules, first and last leaf dust-soiled, scattered foxing, marginal tear to N3. The railway magnate Robert Pitcairn's copy, with his neat notes on the endpaper.
A scathing and satirical rebuttal to "Philo-Caledon" and his generally rapturous 1699 work on Panama and the Darien scheme, this pamphlet is now generally attributed to James Hodges (vide Halkett and Laing). At the time it was believed to be by one Walter Hermes, and a substantial price was put on his head, as the book elicited much anger in Scotland, where it was ordered burned by the public hangman. It squarely lays the blame for the debacle at the feet of the Scots African and Indian Company, who are excoriated in the "Epistle Dedicatory." The text proper begins with a biography, none too flattering, of William Paterson, one of the principal architects of the Darien expedition (which he accompanied along with his wife and child, both of whom died there).
C Property of a Massachusetts Gentleman
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