When Parliament met, June 28, 1705, it was a parliament of groups.  Tweeddale and others, turned out of office in favour of Argyll’s Government, formed the Flying Squadron (Squadrone volante), voting in whatever way would most annoy the Government.  Argyll opened by proposing, as did the Queen’s Message, the instant discussion of the Union (July 3).  The House preferred to deliberate on anything else, and the leader of the Jacobites or Cavaliers, Lockhart of Carnwath, a very able sardonic man, saw that this was, for Jacobite ends, a tactical error.  The more time was expended the more chance had Queensberry to win votes for the Union.  Fletcher of Saltoun, an independent and eloquent patriot and republican, wasted time by impossible proposals.  Hamilton brought forward, and by only two votes lost, a proposal which England would never have dreamed of accepting.  Canny Jacobites, however, abstained from voting, and thence Lockhart dates the ruin of his country.  Supply, at all events, was granted, and on that Argyll adjourned.  The queen was to select Commissioners of both countries to negotiate the Treaty of Union; among the Commissioners Lockhart was the only Cavalier, and he was merely to watch the case in the Jacobite interest.

The meetings of the two sets of Commissioners began at Whitehall on April 16.  It was arranged that all proposals, modifications, and results should pass in writing, and secrecy was to be complete.

The Scots desired Union with Home Rule, with a separate Parliament.  The English would negotiate only on the lines that the Union was to be complete, “incorporating,” with one Parliament for both peoples.  By April 25, 1706, the Scots Commissioners saw that on this point they must acquiesce; the defeat of the French at Ramilies (May 23) proved that, even if they could have leaned on the French, France was a broken reed.  International reciprocity in trade, complete freedom of trade at home and abroad, they did obtain.

As England, thanks to William III. with his incessant Continental wars, had already a great National debt, of which Scotland owed nothing, and as taxation in England was high, while Scottish taxes under the Union would rise to the same level, and to compensate for the Darien losses, the English granted a pecuniary “Equivalent” (May 10).  They also did not raise the Scottish taxes on windows, lights, coal, malt, and salt to the English level, that of war-taxation.  The Equivalent was to purchase the Scottish shares in the East India Company, with interest at five per cent up to May 1, 1707.  That grievance of the shareholders was thus healed, what public debt Scotland owed was to be paid (the Equivalent was about 400,000 pounds), and any part of the money unspent was to be given to improve fisheries and manufactures.