But before this point was reached there had been a very sharp debate regarding the appointment of the Commissioners on Union. The story is told by Lockhart, and is well known. At a late hour on the evening of Saturday the 1st of September, when most of the members had left in the belief that the House was about to rise, Hamilton suddenly addressed the Chancellor, and moved that the nomination of the Commissioners should be left to the Queen. Some members of the Opposition rushed from the House, shouting that they were betrayed; but Fletcher sprang to his feet, and made a personal attack on Hamilton for his inconsistency in making this proposal. ‘Saltoun opposed that most bitterly,’ says Sir David Hume, in his diary. But it was in vain. The vote was called for, and Hamilton’s motion was carried.[15] ‘From this day,’ says Lockhart, ‘we may date the commencement of Scotland’s ruin.’ [15] Lockhart says, ‘by a plurality of eight voices, of which His Grace The Duke of Hamilton had the honour to be one’ (_Memoirs_, i. 133). Sir David Hume says the majority was forty. The session ended quietly on the 21st of September, when the Commissioner touched with the sceptre the Acts to which he had obtained leave to give the royal assent, of which the most important was the ‘Act for a Treaty with England.’ CHAPTER IX The Union Commission at Westminster--The Act of Union passed--Belhaven’s Speech--Violent conduct of Fletcher and other Members during the Debates. When the English Parliament met in October, not only the Alien clause, but all the hostile clauses of which the Estates complained, were repealed. Whether Fletcher was pleased that the object of his motion was so completely and speedily gained may be doubted; but there was now nothing to prevent the progress of the negotiations for the Union. So the Commissioners of both nations met at Westminster on the 16th of April 1706.