Such was the complicated situation with which the English Government had to deal.  Their first step was to advise Queen Anne to assent to the Act of Security, and so to conserve the dignity and amour propre of the Scottish Parliament.  Commissioners were then appointed to negotiate for a union.  No attempt was made to conciliate the Jacobites, for no attempt could have met with any kind of success.  Nor did the commissioners make any effort to satisfy the more extreme Presbyterians, who sullenly refused to acknowledge the union when it became an accomplished fact, and who remained to hamper the Government when the Jacobite troubles commenced.  An assurance that there would be no interference with the Church of Scotland as by law established, and a guarantee that the universities would be maintained in their status quo, satisfied the moderate Presbyterians, and removed their scruples.  Unlike James VI and Cromwell, the advisers of Queen Anne declared their intention of preserving the independent Scots law and the independent Scottish courts of justice, and these guarantees weakened the arguments of the Patriot party.  But above all the English proposals won the support of the ever-increasing commercial interest in Scotland by conceding freedom of trade in a complete form.  They agreed that “all parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain be under the same regulations, prohibitions, and restrictions, and liable to equal impositions and duties for export and import”.  The adjustment of financial obligations was admitted to involve some injustice to Scotland, and an “equivalent” was allowed, to compensate for the responsibility now accruing to Scotland in connection with the English National Debt.  It remained to adjust the representation of Scotland in the united Parliament.  It was at first proposed to allow only thirty-eight members, but the number was finally raised to forty-five.  Thirty of these represented the shires.  Each shire was to elect one representative, except the three groups of Bute and Caithness, Clackmannan and Kinross, and Nairn and Cromarty.  In each group the election was made alternately by the two counties.  Thus Bute, Clackmannan, and Nairn each sent a member in 1708, and Caithness, Kinross, and Cromarty in 1710.  The device is sufficiently unusual to deserve mention.  The burghs were divided into fifteen groups, each of which was given one member.  In this form, after considerable difficulty, the act was carried both in Scotland and in England.  It was a union much less extensive than that which had been planned by James VI or that which had been in actual force under Cromwell.  The existence of a separate Church, governed differently from the English Establishment, and the maintenance of a separate legal code and a separate judicature have helped to preserve some of the national characteristics of the Scots.  Not for many years did the union become popular in Scotland, and not for many years did the two nations become really united.  It might, in fact, be said that the force of steam has accomplished what law has failed to do, and that the real incorporation of Scotland with England dates from the introduction of railways.