A year after the union Daniel Defoe wrote to Sidney, earl Godolphin, who with Marlborough led the now British government, of the improving mood of the Scottish public:

Thanksgivings and convoys had been exerting an influence well before 1708. But Defoe knew that military and naval affairs had a central place in the unionising process. The navy had stood for union; that association had not necessarily been with parliamentary union, but once such incorporation became the settled meaning of union, it would become so. Its protective umbrella, and coercive potential, had played a subtle but important role in bringing it about.

The pen and ink war waged by pro- and anti-union pamphleteers featured a great deal of military metaphor and warlike imagery. When it came to specifics it was a different story; the defence of trade was conspicuous by its absence, save the limits of the present convoy system imposed by the illegality of Scottish trade with the colonies. The issue of union produced far more literature, petitions, and protests against incorporation than in favour of it, as those excluded from power sought to use print and protest to construct an alternative power base. The machinery of government meant ministers had limited need to appeal to public opinion and only belatedly made serious efforts in the public sphere. Despite this the government won and union passed. Much of the debate was between different shades of union not between union and independence, engaging proponents of parliamentary union, called unionists in the context of 1707, against those who looked for alternative plans along federative lines, who can be considered the heirs to the Covenanters’ vision of union.