During the last four or five years of the century the Free and United Presbyterian churches, which after the failure of their union negotiations in 1873 had been connected together by a Mutual Eligibility Act enabling a congregation of one church to call a minister from the other, devoted their energy to the arrangement of an incorporating union. The Synod of the United Presbyterian Church resolved in 1896 to "take steps towards union," and in the following year the Free Assembly responded by appointing a committee to confer with a committee of the other church. The joint committee discovered a "remarkable and happy agreement" between the doctrinal standards, rules and methods of the two bodies, and with very little concessions on either side a common constitution and common "questions and formula" for the admission of ministers and office-bearers were arranged. A minority, always growing smaller, of the Free Church Assembly, protested against the proposed union, and threatened if it were carried through to test its legality in the courts. To meet this opposition, the suggestion is understood to have been made that an act of parliament should be applied for to legalize the union; but this was not done, and the union was carried through on the understanding that the question of the lawfulness of church establishments should be an open one. The supreme courts of the churches met for the last time in their respective places of meeting on the 30th of October 1900, and on the following day the joint meeting took place at which the union was completed, and the United Free Church of Scotland (q.v.) entered on its career. The protesting and dissenting minority at once claimed to be the Free Church. They met outside the Free Assembly Hall on the 31st of October, and, failing to gain admission to it, withdrew to another hall, where they elected Mr Colin Bannatyne their moderator and held the remaining sittings of the Assembly. It was reported that between 16,000 and 17,000 names had been received of persons adhering to the anti-unionist principle. At the Assembly of 1901 it was stated that the Free Church had twenty-five ministers and at least sixty-three congregations. The character of the church is indicated by the fact that its office-bearers were the faithful survivors of the decreasing minority of the Old Free Church, which had protested against the disestablishment resolutions, against the relaxation of subscription, against toleration of the teaching of the Glasgow professors, and against the use in worship of organs or of human hymns. Her congregations were mostly in the Gaelic-speaking districts of Scotland. She was confronted with a very arduous undertaking; her congregations grew in number, but were far from each other and there were not nearly enough ministers. The Highlands were filled, by the Union, with exasperation and dispeace which could not soon subside. The church met