XXI. 1828. CHAP. recommendation to a church; and therefore they would not seek to aggrandise themselves. So long as they were excluded from their civil rights on account of religious distinction, it is impossible that they can view the Church with feelings of good-will; but when it laid down the character of a persecutor, it will cease to be an object of jealousy. The question as to the security of the Church had been practically decided in other parts of the kingdom. If the security of the Church of England is founded on the Test and Corporation Acts, where is the security for the Church of Scotland, where no such acts exist? The Corporation Act never was extended to Ireland, and the Test Act there was abolished forty-eight years ago, and yet no danger has accrued to the Church of England from its want. In fine, these statutes are a relic of a former age, introduced when we were afraid of driving the Church into the arms of the Jacobites, wholly unsuitable to a period when the Church will look for promotion and favour through no other channel than the legitimate one of his Majesty's Treasury and Chancery. The obvious effect of the repeal of these laws will be, to render the Dissenters better affected to the Government, to dispose them to submit to the heavy burdens imposed xviii. 1186, on them with cheerfulness, and, above all, it will be more 1198; Ann. consonant to the spirit of the age than those angry yet inefficient and impracticable laws which are a disgrace to the statute-book."1 1 Parl. Deb. Reg. 1828, 87, 89. 107. Ministers. On the other hand, it was maintained by Mr Peel and Answer of Mr Huskisson: "The question is certainly attended with considerable difficulty; and it cannot be said that it is interwoven with the interest of the Church of England, so that that establishment must fall if these acts are repealed. We are not, however, in an ancient monarchy like this, to alter everything merely because it does not suit the idea of a subsequent age. If we were to do so, how much of our time-honoured institutions would survive the changes of time? Is there anything so absurd XXI. 1828. in these acts as to render their repeal necessary? If CHAP. they are repealed, will the Dissenters be in a better situation? It is said, on the other side, the acts have been for nearly a century in abeyance, from the tests not having been exacted-if so, where is the practical grievance calling for their repeal? If, indeed, the large and respectable body of Dissenters really laboured under the grievances of which they complain, a very strong argument would arise from that circumstance for their removal; but are the grievances now brought forward in Parliament really felt as such by the Dissenters out of doors? So far from it, there have been only six petitions presented on the subject from 1816 to 1827; and as to the petitions got up last year, they were obviously done so for a political purpose. During the discussions on the Catholic question, these acts were never once referred to as a practical grievance. So far from it, in the Catholic Relief Bill, while all other grievances were proposed to be removed, those arising from these acts were left untouched. Mr Canning, the warm supporter of the Catholic claims, said, in the debate on that subject in 1825, This bill does not tend to equalise all the religions in the State, but to equalise all the dissenting sects of England. I am, and this bill is, for a predominant church; and I would not, even in appearance, meddle with the laws which secure that predominance to the Church of England. What is the state of the Protestant Dissenters? It is that they labour under no practical grievances on account of this difference with the Established Church; that they sit with us in this House, and share our councils; that they are admissible into the highest offices of State, and often hold them-such is the operation of the Test and Corporation Acts, as mitigated by the Annual Indemnity Act. This much, and no more, I contend the Catholics should enjoy.' "We are told that in Scotland these acts operate as a proscription of a whole nation! Where, then, are the XXI. 1828. 108. CHAP. complaints from that country? From the whole population of Scotland there is not one solitary petition; so slight and impalpable is the grievance which is now magConcluded. nified in debate into a serious ill. The Scotch have shed, it is said, their blood in the Peninsula and Waterloo. They have done so; and is there any military or naval office or command from which they have been shut out? But your test acts exclude them from the higher offices of Government. Why, look at the present Cabinet; out of fourteen members who compose it, three-Lord Aberdeen, Lord Melville, and Mr Grant-are Scotchmen, and good Presbyterians. Even in England the shutting-out is merely nominal. Last year the Lord Mayor of London was a Protestant Dissenter, and so in other cor1 Parl Deb. porations. The acts have practically gone into desue1202; Ann. tude. In truth, the existing law merely gives a nominal Reg. 1828, preponderance to the Established Church, which it is admitted on all sides it should possess." 1 xviii. 1182, 94. 109. The bill is carried in both Houses. The bill was carried by a majority of 44 in the Commons, the numbers being 237 to 193. In the Peers it experienced a more decided opposition. Lord Eldon, in particular, was vehement in resisting it; declaring that, if these acts were repealed, there was nothing to hinder corporations being entirely filled up with adherents of the Church of Rome. The bill passed, however, with some trifling amendments, on 28th April, by a *Parl. Deb. majority of 40, and soon received the royal assent. The Ann. Reg. only security taken was, that a solemn declaration, "on the true faith of a Christian," was substituted for the sacramental test of the former act.2 xix. 42, 49; 1828, 100, 103. 110. It was evident from this result, as well as from the Reflections tone adopted by Mr Peel and Mr Huskisson in the House ject. of Commons, that Government were far from being in on this sub reality hostile to the change, and that they were by no means averse to being left in a minority on this occasion. The High Church party were in despair. Lord Eldon declared "that, if he stood alone, he would go below the XXI. 1828. Eldon, iii. bar, and vote against the bill; and were he called that CHAP. night to render his account before Heaven, he would go with the consoling reflection that he had never advocated anything mischievous to his country." He added, “I have been fatigued and distressed by what has lately passed in the House of Lords. I have fought like a lion; but my talons have been cut off." It is evident 1 Life of now, however, that these apprehensions were groundless; 42, 43. and that the Church of England has been strengthened, instead of being weakened, by this just and wise removal of disabilities from the Dissenters. Religious difference is never, taken by itself, a reason for political exclusion; it is when it is mixed up, as it unfortunately is in the case of the Roman Catholics, with political divisions, and subjection to a foreign authority, that such exclusion can alone be founded on it. It was obviously unjust to impose any test which had the effect of excluding any class of Protestant Dissenters along with the Catholics, because they acknowledged no foreign spiritual head, and their conduct had not afforded grounds for such disabilities. If, as was wisely alleged by Mr Peel, the exclusion had virtually become obsolete, from the test never being called for, and the penalties removed by the annual bill of indemnity, that only strengthened the argument for a repeal of the statutes imposing them; for why retain irritating and obnoxious acts on the statute-book which might afford a plausible ground of complaint, and confessedly were of no real utility? 111. crease of All these questions, however, were subordinate, and, in fact, but introductory to the great one of CATHOLIC Rapid inEMANCIPATION, which in the course of this year assumed disturbances such importance as to force itself upon the consideration in Ireland. even of the most reluctant Government. The Catholics, who had, ever since the commencement of the Catholic Association, been moulded by the priests into a state of entire subjection to their spiritual and political leaders, had been very quiet during the brief period of Mr Canning's XXI. 1828. CHAP. administration, became more noisy and active under that of Lord Goderich, and, on the accession of the Duke of Wellington to the helm, suddenly started up into portentous activity. The Association, which had been struck at by act of parliament, had never been in reality put down; its activity was only in abeyance; and on the return of the Tories to power, it recommenced its operations with the utmost vigour. No prosecutions were or could be thought of; for such was the division of opinion in Ireland, that it was next to impossible to get twelve men to agree on any political question; and by the strange infatuation of the English lawyers for their own institutions, without any regard to the character or circumstances of the people to whom they were applied, unanimity in juries was required where unanimity could never be expected. Thus impunity from punishment was certain, and the Catholic Association pursued its course with unrelenting vigour, under the direction of skilful 1828, 121; leaders, who caused it to abstain carefully from any overt acts of treason, and were indifferent how much sedition was spoken in its assemblies.1 1 Ann. Reg. Martineau, i. 472. 112. which the ling free holders gave signs. But the Association had now acquired such power that Facilities its operations were no longer confined to empty declamaforty-shil- tion, but directed openly and avowedly to obtaining a majority in Parliament for its partisans. A peculiar to their de- circumstance the result of the unhappy extension of English institutions to a country unfitted for their reception-afforded great facilities for the attainment of this object. The forty-shilling freeholder, the stout yeoman owning an heritage worth £40 a-year of our money, when he was enfranchised in England in the time of Henry VI., had sunk by the change in the value of money sufficiently low even in that country; but in Ireland he had come to represent a class as different from the yeomen of England as darkness is from light. As every estate enjoyed for life constituted a freehold, the expedient was fallen upon of multiplying farms, or |