REPEAL OF THE TEST AND CORPORATION ACTS.
The grand question of this session was the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts: acts which excluded dissenters from offices of trust and power, and shut the doors of all corporations against them, unless they consented to take the sacrament according to the ritual of the church of England. Lord John Russell introduced this subject on the 26th of February, by moving “That this house will resolve itself into a committee of the whole house, to consider of so much of the acts of the 13th and 25th of Charles II., as require persons, before they are admitted into any office or place in corporations, or having accepted any office, civil or military, or any place of trust under the crown, to receive the sacrament of the Lord’s supper according to the rites of the church of England.” In introducing this motion Lord John Russell took a review of the history of the statutes in question, and he argued that they had been originally enacted for reasons which no longer existed. He maintained the justice and expediency of the motion on the ground that while these tests were an infliction on the dissenters, they afforded no protection to the church of England; but on the contrary, exposed her to dangers to which she would not be otherwise obnoxious. Without serving any good purpose, he said, they made the dissenters irritated enemies, instead of converting them into companions or friends. Another objection, he said, rose from the nature of the test, which made it a shameless abuse of the most solemn of all religious rites. The sacrament of the Lord’s supper was held by the church to be most sacred; and yet it was prostituted bylaw to be a mere qualification for office. History stated, he remarked, that it was the custom for persons to be waiting in taverns and houses near the church, and when service was over an appointed person called out, “Those who want to be qualified will please to step up this way,” and then persons took the communion solely for the purpose of receiving office. Such, said his lordship, were the consequences of mixing politics with religion. Political dissensions were aggravated by the venom of theological disputes, and religion profaned by the vices of ambition; making it both hateful to man and offensive to God. The only answers, continued his lordship, which could be made to these objections, were that the dissenters, in consequence of the Indemnity Act, suffered no real hardship, and that the law in its present state was necessary to the security of the church. But neither of these positions was true. The practical grievance suffered by the dissenters was much heavier than the legal grievances appearing on the face of the statutes: even the indemnity act was passed on the ground that the omission to qualify had proceeded from ignorance, absence, or unavoidable accident, and thus refused all relief to those in whom the omission flowed from conscientious scruples. The fact was, that many dissenters refused to take office on such degrading terms; they refused to attain by a fraud upon the statute, honours and emoluments which the law declared they should not attain in any other way. In conclusion his lordship remarked;—“I have proved that these acts violate the sacred rights of conscience, and are of the nature of religious persecution; I have shown that so far from not having inflicted any hardship on the body upon whom they operate, they are fraught with great mischief, irritation, and injustice; and I have shown that they are totally at variance with our own policy in Scotland and Ireland, as well as with the enlightened legislation of all the Christian countries of Europe. If I am asked what advantage the country is to derive from the abrogation of such laws, I answer, that the obvious tendency of the measure, independently of its justice, will be to render the dissenters better affected to the government; to inspire them with dispositions to bear the heavy burdens imposed on them by the necessities of the state with cheerfulness, or at least, with resignation; and above all, it will be more consonant to the tone and spirit of the age than the existence of those angry, yet inefficient and impracticable laws, which are a disgrace to the statute-book.” This motion was seconded by Mr. J. Smith, and ably supported by Lords Milton, Althorp, and Nugent, and by Messrs. Brougham, Ferguson, and Palmer. One of its most powerful advocates was Mr. Ferguson one of the members for Scotland, who desired the house to look at the Test and Corporation Acts, as they affected not merely a minority in England, but even the established religion of a constituent part of the empire. Scotland had a legal national religion equally with England; for at the union it was provided by the parliament of England that no alteration should be made in the principles, doctrine, or discipline, of the church of England, and the Scotch parliament, true to their own particular doctrines, immediately issued orders to their commissioners, that any clause should be null and void which militated in any way against the principles, doctrines, or discipline of the Protestant Presbyterian religion. The religion of Scotland was, therefore, a state religion as well as that of England, yet its members were affected by these penal laws, and prevented from serving their king, but at the risk of incurring these penalties, or renouncing their religion. Why, he asked, this proscription of a whole nation, upon the notion that this mode of exclusion was the best way of defending the church and state as by law established? Why deny a community of privileges to those who confer equal services, and encounter equal danger? On what occasion had the people of Scotland not contributed their full share in support of Great Britain? Were they no longer wanted? Hid the church of England desire to be left to defend the empire exclusively? If so, let the dissenters be told to withdraw, and quit a defence which they could only remain to make under exposure to ignominy. Take the battle of Waterloo, he continued, which had crowned the renown of the most illustrious leader of their times. What would have been the fate of that battle, and that leader, if the army which had conquered, had been filled only by the sons of the church of England? Take from the field the Scottish regiments; take away too the aid of those sons of Ireland, the proscribed Catholics: what then would have been the chance of their arms, divested of the Scottish and Irish soldiers, who filled their ranks and served their navy in every quarter of the globe! And if they had the assistance of such men, when the hour of peril came upon them, they ought not to deny their confidence in a time of tranquillity and peace. Ministers opposed the motion, the opposition being conducted by Messrs. Huskisson and Peel. Their chief defence was that the acts in question led to no particular hardship; and they sought evidence of this in the Indemnity Acts, and in the long silence of the dissenters themselves, from whom it was to have been expected that the constant infliction of a permanent grievance would have drawn forth incessant complaints. Mr. Huskisson said, that he doubted whether the present motion was calculated to remove any grievance. The grievances, indeed, complained of were of an imaginary character: he had yet to learn what obstacles existed against the honourable ambition of the dissenters. They had, he said, their full share of the civil power of the country, and were qualified to fill the first offices in the army and navy. Forty years had elapsed since this subject was discussed, and that period had been marked by many eager discussions on another great question involving the principles of religious liberty: could it be credited that the petitioners before the house, many of whom possessed acute intellects and intelligent minds, enjoyed the highest consideration in the country, if they knew there was anything in the state of the law to impede the fair, useful, and honourable exercise of their talents, would not have long since, firmly and unanimously, called upon the house to remove the grievance. The fact could not be so, for they had preserved total silence for the long period of forty years. Mr. Peel said that the question was attended with great difficulty. He was not prepared to say that it was essentially interwoven with the interest of the church of England; he did not think, indeed, that the two were so connected, that the church of England must fall, if the Test and Corporation Acts were repealed. He thought, however, with Mr. Huskisson, that the Protestant dissenters did not labour under such grievances as had been represented, and that they did not look at the Test and Corporation Acts, together with the Indemnity Act as honourable gentlemen had described. It had been said, he remarked, that we had shed the blood of the Scotch regiments in the Peninsula and at Waterloo. “What office of naval or military command had been closed against their officers? It was also said that the Test Acts shut them out from the higher offices of government. For an answer, look at the ministry: of the fourteen members of the cabinet, three, namely, Lords Aberdeen and Melville, and the president of the board of trade, were Scotsmen and good Presbyterians, whom these acts nevertheless had not succeeded in shutting out. The fact was,” he continued, “the existing law gave merely a nominal predominance to the established church; and he heartily wished, therefore, that this question had been allowed to remain quiescent, especially as it was practically offensive to no one.” In answer to the views taken by ministers, on the subject, Mr. Brougham maintained that the acts were daily and positively felt to be a most decided grievance. AVas it no grievance, he asked, to bear the mark of the chain remaining, after the fetter had been knocked away? Was it no grievance for a dissenter, wherever he went, to look like, and to be treated like a different being? It was said that temporal interests were not concerned: this he denied. A dissenter could not stand for a corporation. It had been stated that the late lord mayor of London was a dissenter, and that he had taken the sacrament: that statement was in favour of the argument. With respect to Scotland he knew that not one Presbyterian in a thousand would take the sacrament, would not even go to a place of worship where there was an organ, would consider it idolatry to kneel at an altar; if they conscientiously thought so, was it to be wondered at that they evinced a repugnance at what they considered a mixture of idolatry with Christian worship? If in the recent contest at Vintry ward, one of the candidates had differed from the other as to trans-substantiation or anything of that sort, there would be an end to this legal controversy: the court of king’s bench would never have heard of it, and the churchman would have been elected. Was not this a grievance? The knowledge of this act operated so, that, though the dissenter might walk on in his course, when not opposed, yet even if he aspired to a corporation, and no individual opposed him; if he was unanimously elected, and actually filled the place, a single individual might upset his election, he must retire. The consequence was that the dissenter would not seek such places: he retired to his library, to retirement, to private pursuits, with what feelings he might towards the government and the constitution. He was condemned to privacy, because he was of a different religion from the state, and because he would not sacrifice his religion for his place. Lord Palmerston said that he thought it would be an act of injustice to the Catholics to repeal this minor grievance while they suffered under much severer enactments. Sir T. Acland conceived that a middle course would afford relief, while the theoretical principal of the law would remain untouched. But it was found useless to strive against the spirit of the age. After an abortive project of Sir T. Ackland for suspending instead of repealing the acts in question, as well as a proposition made by Mr. Peel to take more time for consideration, Lord John Russell’s motion was carried by a majority of two hundred and thirty-seven, against one hundred and ninety-three.
Government had now one of two courses to adopt; either to resign their opinions or their places. They chose the former alternative; for when the motion for the house going into a committee was brought forward, Mr. Peel said he could not think of pressing his sentiments against those of the majority. Government itself, indeed, now took up the measure, adding by way of security to the established church a form of declaration, which all who accepted office were to take, that they would not exert any power or influence which they might possess by virtue of that office to the injury or subversion of the Protestant church as by law established, or to disturb it in the possession of those rights and privileges to which it is by law entitled. This declaration was described by those who supported simple repeal as both useless and unnecessary; but they recommended that the suggestion should be adopted rather than the bill should not pass. With this amendment it was carried, and it was introduced into the house of peers by Lord Holland. There was no ministerial deposition encountered here, and being in a manner a bill of the government it was generally supported by the spiritual peers. The bishop of Chester said:—“I wish the bill to pass, if for no other reason, yet for this—because the present laws do not answer their purpose. If the declaration now proposed be taken by a conscientious dissenter, it will prevent him from endeavouring, at least from indirectly endeavouring, to injure the establishment; and that is more than the sacramental test, if taken, could effect: if it be taken by a person who does not conscientiously intend to observe it, that person would not be kept out of office by any test whatever.” Lord Eldon, however, gave the bill his most decided opposition. He had heard much, he said, of “the march of mind,” but he never expected to see it thus march into the house with the Duke of Wellington and the bishops at its head. Of the declaration, he said, that instead of making the taker of office describe himself as belonging to some sort of religion, whether a Unitarian, a Catholic, or a Free-thinker, it did not require him to say, he had only to answer, that he was of the Christian faith; neither did it call on him to observe the declaration by such phrases as “I am a Christian,” or as, “I stand in the presence of my God.” The confidence to be reposed in the declaration did not rest upon the faith of a Christian, or any other faith whatever. Then again, he said, the declaration is to be extended to all offices of trust and emolument under the crown, and the bill left it entirely to the king to say in such cases, whether his majesty would, or would not require such a declaration: he could not but object to the provisions of a bill, the object of which was to take away the sacramental test merely on the ground of expediency, and to substitute in its place a declaration which, in some instances, might or might not be taken, according to the will of the sovereign. The form of declaration was also strongly objected to in the committee; and several amendments were carried to meet the views of the objectors, though not narrowing the principles of the bill; and it finally passed by a large majority. The amendments made simply consisted in this, that the man assuming a public office in a Christian community should declare that he was a Christian, or, at least, that he was not an infidel. The commons agreed to all that were made, although some members did not approve of them.