of the Kirk of Scotland who had so eminently distinguished themselves in the army and the navy; and of all those celebrated legislators and senators who had added learning and dignity to the courts of justice, and wisdom to his Majesty's councils. If tests were right, the present was clearly a wrong test, because it shunned all the purposes for which tests were originally introduced.

"The candour of the noble lord, and the information which, doubtless, he had collected upon inquiry since," Mr. Fox said, "had enabled him to satisfy the House in a point which had not been answered two years ago, and that was in the case of a person who was a notorious evil-doer, who applied for the sacrament. The manner of the noble lord's answer was rational.* and, from the good sense of it, he had no doubt that it was the true answer; but upon this ground it might be proper to take a serious view of the melancholy situation of the person who, upon application to a minister, had been refused the Sacrament. From that very moment did he incur the penalties of the act; from that moment was he punished in a manner perfectly unexampled, and unauthorized by the laws of the land; from that moment was he convicted without a trial by jury, and disabled from enjoying an office which his Majesty, in the legal exercise of his prerogative, might have thought proper to confer upon him.

"Much boasted reliance had been placed upon the old argument of the length of time that the Test and Corporation Acts had subsisted. It was true, that they had so subsisted for nearly a century: but how had they subsisted? By repeated suspensions; for the indemnity bills were, he believed, literally speaking, annual acts. With regard to the noble lord's argument relative to the evading of these indemnity bills, he admitted that if any person neglected to conform merely for the sake of evading the law, he certainly acted in direct opposition to an act of parliament, and did not conduct himself as a good subject ought to do. While an act was deemed fit to remain in force, it was the duty of every good subject not to evade it. Indeed, the only justification of evading a statute which could be for a moment maintained, was where that statute notoriously ought not to remain in force. He trusted, however, that the House would consent to go into the committee, to examine whether it was fitting or necessary to be repealed or not, and not deny the requisition, as if they were ashamed even to look at

Lord North said, that "if any notorious evil-doer offered himself to receive the Sacrament, he might be rejected; and his having, or not having, a place did not make the case at all different. The minister might reject him; nor did such rejection render the minister liable to any punishment. If the minister had good reason to believe the person applying for the Sacrament was an evil-doer, he might refuse it."-Parl. Hist. vol. xxviii. p. 26. But see Burn's Eccl. Law, vol. iv. pp. 425.

† Before the end of every session of parliament an act was passed to indemnify all persons who had not complied with the requisitions of the Corporation and Test Acts, provided they qualified themselves within a time specified in the act; and provided also, that judgment in any action or prosecution had not been obtained against them for their former omission.

the statutes in question.

He trusted that it was scarcely necessary to remind the House that, in consequence of a violent alarm from the Papists, the Test Act had been introduced, with a view to exclude them, and them only, from office; that the Dissenters had cordially joined in it, and consented to their own exclusion, thinking that a less evil than to leave the door open to Papists. And is it possible, therefore, (added Mr. Fox,) that you can thus ungenerously requite them; thus take a most unbecoming advantage of their patriotism, and convert what they consented to as necessary for the general safety at that time, into a perpetual exclusion against themselves? Is it thus that the Church would reward the service which they had done her in the day of her distress?"

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Adverting to the Occasional Conformity Act, which had been repealed a few years since, Mr. Fox observed, that they had heard, during the course of the debate, that the Church of England was in its glory. The Church of England, therefore, according to the arguments of the noble lord, and the advocates for the continuance of the statutes, which, he contended, were at once too needless and too unjust to remain in force any longer, had not suffered, but gained by what they feared would have proved detrimental to her interests. The Dissenters had been stated to be pious and good men ; but it had been said that they might nevertheless be no friends to the Church of England. Surely, if they were dangerous anywhere, it must be as members of Parliament, and as electors of the representatives of the people; and yet they were suffered to sit as the one, and vote as the other. Mr. Fox declared that, for his own part, he was a friend to an established religion in every country, and wished that it might always be that which coincided most with the ideas of the bulk of the State, and the general sentiments of the people. In the southern parts of Great Britain, Hierarchy was the established Church, and in the northern, the Kirk; and for the best possible reason, because they were each most agreeable to the majority of the people in their respective situations. It would, perhaps, be contended, that the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts might enable the Dissenters to obtain a majority. This he scarcely thought probable; but it appeared fully sufficient to answer, that if the majority of the people of England should ever be for the abolition of the Established Church, in such a case the abolition ought immediately to follow.

"To the opinion of the honourable gentleman who opened the debate, that there were too many oaths imposed by the statutes in force, Mr. Fox observed that he most thoroughly assented. What, he desired to know, could be a greater proof of the indecency resulting from the practice of qualifying by oaths, than if, when a man was seen upon the point of taking the sacrament, it should be asked, 'Is this man going to make his peace with Heaven, and to repent him of his sins?' the answer should be, ‘No ; he goes to the Communion table only because he has lately received the appointment of First Lord of the Treasury!' When the noble lord in the blue ribbon represented the Corporation Act to have been forced from the

Legislature as an act of self-defence, he might truly be said to have entered into the exact description of an act which, after the lapse of a century, when the grounds and reasons for passing it no longer existed, ought to be repealed. The noble lord had accurately stated that the Corporation Act was forced from the Legislature in the reign of Charles the Second, by the violence of the sectaries, which had not only overturned the Church, but the State, and that so lately, that, threatening to do the same again, it became necessary to apply a present preventive, to guard against the impending danger. No better argument, he repeated, need be urged against it now, than that it had been extorted a century ago from the legislature, by resentment of past and the dread of future injuries. Fear and indignation had operated on the parliament of Charles the Second. Did the same motives operate on the parliament of George the Third ? Certainly not; and could there be any reason for continuing an act, when the violence which gave birth to it had long since subsided? Party and religion were separate in their views and in their nature; and as it was for the reputation of both that they should remain so, he therefore urged the injustice of harassing with penalties, disabilities, and statutable restrictions, the Dissenters; a respectable body of men, whose morals were not inconsistent with the religion of the Church of England, and whose sentiments were favourable to the family on the throne.

"It had been said, that in France it was customary for Protestants to be employed in the army and in civil offices, and that in Protestant countries abroad Papists were also employed. For the purpose of invalidating this remark, the noble lord had given an ingenious and able answer; but let it be examined. The noble lord had said, that the monarch of a free country was limited, while the employing whom the prince pleased was one of the trivial advantages incidental to absolute power. Let not, then, Great Britain be the last to avail herself of such an advantage. Wisdom had been described as the offspring of freedom; and should a people who boasted of their freedom, and amongst whom, he firmly believed, men of enlightened understandings were more common than among those who lived under a less happy form of government, reject those liberal principles of toleration which other nations had adopted? It was upon such a ground that, addressing himself to the Church of England in particular, he felt himself justified in accosting her, as a friendly adviser, in language to this effect: Tuque prior, tu parce, genus qui ducis Olympo!" And surely the Church of England ought, if possible, more than any other ecclesiastical establishment upon earth, practically to inculcate the glorious idea that indulgence to other sects, the most candid allowance for the diversity of their opinions, and a sincere zeal for the advancement of mutual charity and benevolence, were the truest and the happiest testimonies which she could give of the divine origin of her religion!" Mr. Fox concluded with giving his hearty assent to the motion.

On a division, the motion was rejected by a majority of 122 to 102.

MR. Fox's MOTION FOR THE REPEAL OF THE TEST AND CORPORATION ACTS.

1790. March 2. The very small majority by which Mr. Beaufoy's motion for the relief of Protestant Dissenters had been rejected last year, induced that body to renew their application to Parliament; and they resolved to entrust their cause to the zeal and talents of Mr. Fox. Accordingly, this day,

Mr. Fox, agreeably to the notice he had given, rose to make his intended motion for the Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. He requested the Act of the 13th of Charles the Second, for the well governing and regulating of Corporations, as well as the Act of the 25th of the same reign, for the prevention of danger from Popish Recusants, might be severally read by the clerk. He then observed, "that as the question he was about to submit to the consideration of the House that day had excited such great and general expectation, as well in that House as in the country at large, he held it his indispensable duty to state the reasons which induced him, on the present occasion, to move the question, which, in two former sessions, had been brought forward by another honourable gentleman, and had been so ably argued and so amply discussed by the House. He was confident the cause of which he stood that day the advocate, had better have remained in the hands to which it had been entrusted on former occasions: he, however, assured the House that he did not obtrude himself upon those most interested in the success of the motion; nor was he under any particular obligations to the parties who considered themselves aggrieved and oppressed by the acts in question; yet, regarding their cause as the cause of liberty and truth, to which he should ever profess the most unalienable attachment, he did not hesitate to stand forward the advocate of civil and religious liberty, even in favour of men who had, on different occasions, acted hostilely towards him. It afforded him, however, a matter of triumph and exultation to observe that, though in former times he had not enjoyed much of the confidence of that description of men who were the object of his motion, yet his vanity was not a little flattered by the good opinion they must now entertain of him, whom they had solicited with such importunity to conduct the management of their cause, notwithstanding their former difference of political opinions.

The present was the period which demanded of public men a free and candid explanation of their political sentiments. In considering the case of the Dissenters, the first argument which naturally presented itself was that spirit of intolerance and persecution which dictated the oppressive acts, the present subject of grievance and complaint. He conceived it utterly impossible to view any species of persecution, whether civil or religious, without horror and detestation; and therefore the proceedings of a neighbouring nation, in regard to that part of their constitution, so far, in his opinion, from being a subject of censure, merited the esteem and applause of a great

people; who were investigating the first principles with a view to secure the rights of men, and were wisely applying them to the abolition of that spirit of persecution and intolerance which had for a long period disgraced their government. Were we to recur to first principles, and observe the progress of the Christian religion in the first stages of its propagation, we should perceive that no vice, evil, or detriment, had ever sprung from toleration. Persecution had always been a fertile source of much evil; perfidy, cruelty, and murder, had often been the consequence of intolerant principles. The massacres at Paris, the martyrdoms of Smithfield, and the executions of the Inquisition, were among the many horrid and detestable crimes which had, at different times, originated solely from persecution. To suppose a man wicked or immoral merely on account of any difference of religious opinion, was as false as it was absurd; yet this was the original principle of persecution. Morality was thought to be most effectually enforced and propagated by insisting on a general unity of religious sentiments; the dogmas of men in power were to be substituted in the room of every other religious opinion, as it might best answer the ends of policy and ambition. It proceeded entirely on this grand fundamental error, that one man could better judge of the religious opinion of another than the man himself could. Upon this absurd principle, persecution might be consistent; but in this it resembled madness: the characteristic of which was acting consistently upon wrong principles. The doctrines of Christianity might have been expected to possess sufficient influence to counteract this great error; but the reverse had proved to be the case. Torture and death had been the auxiliaries of persecution; the grand engines used in support of one particular system of religious opinion, to the extermination of every other. Toleration proceeded on the direct contrary principles. Its doctrines, he was sorry to say, even in this enlightened age, were but of a modern date in any part of the world. Before the reign of King William it had not a footing in England. The celebrated Act of Toleration of that reign, notwithstanding the boasted liberality of its principle, was narrow, confined, and incomplete. Persecu

1 Wm. & Mary, c. xviii. This statute exempted from the penal laws against Popish recusants, (except the Test Acts), such Dissenters as should take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, (or make a similar affirmation being Quakers), and subscribe the declaration against Popery, and such Dissenting ministers as should also subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles, except the thirty-fourth, thirty-fifth, and thirty-sixth, these words of the twentieth article, namely, "The Church hath power to decree rites or ceremonies, and authority in controversies of faith;" and that part of the twenty-seventh touching infant baptism. The act was not, however, to extend to such Dissenters as should hold meetings for religious worship with bolted doors; nor was it to be construed to exempt Dissenters from the payment of tithes, or other parochial duties. It provided that in case any Dissenters should be elected to any parochial office, and should scruple to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and sign the declaration against Popery, he should be allowed to execute the office by deputy. Meeting-houses were required to be registered, and were protected from insult by a penalty. No part of this toleration was extended to Papists, or to such as denied the Trinity.