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.

There was much friction in the first year of the Union over excisemen and
tax-collectors: smuggling began to be a recognised profession. Meanwhile,
since 1707, a Colonel Hooke had been acting in Scotland, nominally in
Jacobite, really rather in French interests. Hooke's intrigues were in
part betrayed by De Foe's agent, Ker of Kersland, an amusingly impudent
knave, and were thwarted by jealousies of Argyll and Hamilton. By
deceptive promises (for he was himself deceived into expecting the aid of
the Ulster Protestants) Hooke induced Louis XIV. to send five men-o