They insisted on referring Chamberlayne's plan to a committee; and the committee reported that the plan was practicable, and would tend to the benefit of the nation.

[521] But by this time the united force of demonstration and derision had begun to produce an effect even on the most ignorant rustics in the House.

The report lay unnoticed on the table; and the country was saved from a calamity compared with which the defeat of Landen and the loss of the Smyrna fleet would have been blessings.
All the projectors of this busy time, however, were not so absurd as Chamberlayne.

One among them, William Paterson, was an ingenious, though not always a judicious, speculator.

Of his early life little is known except that he was a native of Scotland, and that he had been in the West Indies.