The number of Scottish members of the British Parliament was fixed at forty-five.  On this point the Scots felt that they were hardly used; the number of their elected representatives of peers in the Lords was sixteen.  Scotland retained her Courts of Law; the feudal jurisdictions which gave to Argyll and others almost princely powers were retained, and Scottish procedure in trials continued to vary much from the English model.  Appeals from the Court of Session had previously been brought before the Parliament of Scotland; henceforth they were to be heard by the Judges, Scots and English, in the British House of Lords.  On July 23, 1706, the treaty was completed; on October 3 the Scottish Parliament met to debate on it, with Queensberry as Commissioner.  Harley, the English Minister, sent down the author of ‘Robinson Crusoe’ to watch, spy, argue, persuade, and secretly report, and De Foe’s letters contain the history of the session.

The parties in Parliament were thus variously disposed:  the Cavaliers, including Hamilton, had been approached by Louis XIV. and King James (the Pretender), but had not committed themselves.  Queensberry always knew every risky step taken by Hamilton, who began to take several, but in each case received a friendly warning which he dared not disregard.  At the opposite pole, the Cameronians and other extreme Presbyterians loathed the Union, and at last (November-December) a scheme for the Cameronians and the clans of Angus and Perthshire to meet in arms in Edinburgh and clear out the Parliament caused much alarm.  But Hamilton, before the arrangement came to a head, was terrorised, and the intentions of the Cameronians, as far as their records prove, had never been officially ratified by their leaders. {250} There was plenty of popular rioting during the session, but Argyll rode into Edinburgh at the head of the Horse Guards, and Leven held all the gates with drafts from the garrison of the castle.  The Commissioners of the General Assembly made protests on various points, but were pacified after the security of the Kirk had been guaranteed.  Finally, Hamilton prepared a parliamentary mine, which would have blown the Treaty of Union sky-high, but on the night when he should have appeared in the House and set the match to his petard—­he had toothache!  This was the third occasion on which he had deserted the Cavaliers; the Opposition fell to pieces.  The Squadrone volante and the majority of the peers supported the Bill, which was passed.  On January 16, 1707, the Treaty of Union was touched with the sceptre, “and there is the end of an auld sang,” said Seafield.  In May 1707 a solemn service was held at St Paul’s to commemorate the Union.