In the Grand Committee for preparing a Bill two questions arose.[590] First, who were the persons to be benefited? or, in the quaint phraseology of the time, "who were to be eased?" Should everybody be included? Should all Protestants? Should all kinds of Dissenters, including Levellers, respecting whose existence, however, within a religious pale, doubts were expressed. Papists were altogether put out of court. "The Papists," exclaimed Mr. Garroway, "are under an anathema, and cannot come in under pain of excommunication." Finally, it was resolved that ease should "be given to His Majesty's Protestant subjects, that will subscribe to the doctrine of the Church of England, and take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy." The second question respected the nature and extent of the relief to be afforded. What was "the ease" to be? Was it to be in the form of comprehension, or of toleration, or of both? As to this point, the House seemed to be in great difficulty. Indistinct ideas of some sort of comprehension were most common. Even Alderman Love, a Dissenter, veered—if we may judge from the imperfect report of his speech—now on the side of liberty outside the Church, and now on the side of a large and liberal inclusion within it. He confessed no kindness for those who desired preferment, with conformity to the laws. Those on whose behalf he spoke did not, he said, desire to be exempted from paying tithes, or from holding parish offices, except the office of churchwarden, and that "not without being willing to pay a fine for the contempt." He pleaded that, after submitting to the test to be agreed upon, Nonconformist ministers ought to be allowed to preach, "but not without the magistrates' leave, the doors open, and in the public churches, when no service is there." "This latter motion," says the report, "he retracted, being generally decried." Then he rejoined that he used the words "in the church," because people could not be thought to plot in such a place. From a second speech by the same person it appears that he moved for a general indulgence by way of comprehension, but what he meant by that is not explained.[591] Comprehension in some way was the object chiefly desired, and the terms of such comprehension were largely and confusedly discussed. Even then a spirit moved over the waters of debate which prepared for the order to be evolved at the Revolution; but toleration, in its nature and principle, as it was enforced by some of the Commonwealths-men, or as it was expounded by John Locke, or as it is now universally understood, seems not to have been stated by any who shared in the debate. This remarkable circumstance indicates that none of the members who now sat on the benches of St. Stephen's were exactly of the same stamp as some who had occupied them before the Restoration.[592] Either such men were not there at all, or they had changed their opinions, or they had become afraid to utter what they believed. As we anticipate the ground which was taken, and the sentiments which were prevalent when the Toleration Act was passed, comparing the state of opinion at the Revolution with the state of opinion in the year 1673, we must find it instructive to notice the wonderful advance during the subsequent interval, and to observe how silently and steadily the principles and the spirit of justice were making their way. One member who favoured toleration was so niggardly, that he desired only to "have it penned for such places as should be appointed by Act of Parliament;" and another thought it not reasonable that Nonconformists should have their "meeting-houses out of town." Nor did the advocates of this restricted freedom plead for more than its temporary concession. The heads of the Bill, as at last concocted, were, first, in reference to comprehension, that subscription should be required to the doctrinal Articles of the Church of England, and that the requirement for declaring "assent and consent" to the Prayer Book, should be repealed; and next, in reference to toleration, that pains and penalties for religious meetings with open doors should be no longer inflicted, and that teachers should subscribe and take the prescribed oaths at the quarter sessions. The Act should continue in force for a year, and from thence to the end of the next session of Parliament.
MEASURES OF RELIEF.
These resolutions were adopted on the 27th of February,[593] and a Bill founded upon them was read a third time on the 17th of March.[594] On the second of these occasions, Secretary Coventry said he hoped the measure, which did not fix sufficient limitations, would not destroy the Church. To attempt such toleration as had never been tried before, he maintained to be a frivolous expedient, the consequences of which it would be beyond their power to remedy. One speaker uttered the oft-repeated charge: "Dissenters grow numerous. If you pass this Act, you give away the peace of the nation. A Puritan was ever a rebel; begin with Calvin. These Dissenters made up the whole army against the King. The destruction of the Church was then aimed at. Pray God it be not so now!"[595] The Republicanism of Nonconformists appears to have been a stock argument against granting them any liberty.
1673.
The Bill did pass the Commons, and this fact proves that, however inadequate might be the enunciation of the principles of civil and religious liberty, the House departed from the doctrines upheld by it ten years before. The distinction between articles of discipline and of doctrine was laid down, burdensome impositions were proposed to be removed, and a considerable amount of freedom was provided for those outside the Establishment, in connection with a wider opening of the door to those disposed to enter in.
Yet, after all, these debates and votes ended in nothing. The Bill underwent several amendments when it reached the Lords. These amendments were objected to by the Commons. Time was wasted between the two Houses, notwithstanding the King's warning against delay; such delay showing that neither portion of the legislature could have been thoroughly in earnest about the proposal. Its fate was determined by the adjournment of Parliament before the Bill had passed the Lords, and by a prorogation after adjournment.[596]
About the same time another Bill came before the Commons' House, enjoining the practice of frequent catechising in parochial churches; a measure resembling that which the Presbyterians, in their day of power, had so earnestly desired. Its progress, also, was stopped by the Lords.
TEST ACT.
1673.
Coincident with the proceedings upon the Belief Bill were two very important circumstances, namely, the passing of the Test Act and the cancelling of the Declaration of Indulgence.
The former originated so early as the 28th of February, 1673, when a motion was made for removing all Popish recusants out of military office or command. This motion was exceedingly offensive to the King and to the Court—being aimed at the King's brother, the Duke of York, who was already generally suspected of having embraced the Romish faith. There followed the same day a resolution, covering a still wider ground of prohibition—i.e., "that all persons who should refuse to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and to receive the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England," should be "incapable of all public employments, military or civil."[597] This attack on the Catholics was seconded by an address, agreed upon, the 3rd of March, by the Commons against the growth of Popery. Also, a Bill appeared in the Lower House, to prevent that growth, by the method expressed in the above resolution. Strange to say, the idea of the test so expressed emanated on this occasion from no other person than Lord Arlington, the reputed Romanist, and a member of the Cabal—partly, it is said, to gratify personal resentment, and partly to accomplish objects of personal ambition.[598] In the course of the debate in the Commons, a member tendered a proviso "for renouncing the doctrine of Transubstantiation, for a further test to persons bearing office;"[599] and again, strange to say, this additional sting in a measure sufficiently irritating to His Majesty, the Duke, and the whole Court, was introduced by another member of the Cabal, whose name began with the second vowel in the notorious word—Ashley, now Earl of Shaftesbury.[600] In this case, too, no less than in the former, resentment and ambition, it is to be feared, mingled with those motives which determined this step; for he aimed, by what he was doing, to drive from power the Romanizing members of the Cabinet, and to make himself master of the situation—a project, however, in which he did not succeed. This additional barrier of Protestant defence, constructed by Shaftesbury's hands, occasioned a polemical debate in the House of Commons—the members talking much, and very confusedly of Transubstantiation and of Consubstantiation, and of the Sacramental doctrine held by the Church of England. The Bill, including the new provision, passed the Commons on the 12th of March; and to add one more strange circumstance to this history uniquely strange, the measure found its most eloquent supporter in the House of Lords in the person of the Roman Catholic Earl of Bristol, who defended it on the ground that it would quiet a popular panic, by the simple removal of a few Catholics from office, without enacting any new penalties against Catholic worship. This looked like sacrificing personal interests to patriotism; but the Earl surrendered all pretension to the character of a confessor or a hero, by procuring the insertion of a clause which secured to himself and to his wife a Royal pension, with an exemption from the necessity of taking the test. The King—who at first seemed as much incensed as his Courtiers—at last reluctantly gave way; assent to the Bill being the price demanded by the Commons for the replenishment of His Majesty's bankrupt exchequer. It is said that three members of the Cabal—Clifford, Buckingham, and Lauderdale, who supported the arbitrary power of the Crown, professed to despise such vulgar temptations as had overcome their colleagues—and that they encouraged the Monarch to imitate his father, by seizing the obnoxious members of the opposition, by bringing the Army up to town, and by making himself absolute master of the realm;[601] but Charles was too indolent and too shrewd to venture on an attempt so bold and so insane. The Test Act, therefore, passed; and whilst it originated with one Catholic nobleman, and was advocated by another, it found no opponent in the House of Commons on the part of the Nonconformists or their friends. It is very true that the Bill pointed only at Catholics, that it really proposed an anti-Popish test; yet the construction of it, although it did not exclude from office such Dissenters as could occasionally conform, did effectually exclude all who scrupled to do so. Aimed at the Romanists, it struck the Presbyterians. It is clear that had the Nonconformists and the Catholics joined their forces with those of the Court, in opposing the measure, they might have defeated it; but the first of these classes for the present submitted to the inconvenience, from the horror which they entertained of Popery, hoping, at the same time, that some relief would be afforded for this personal sacrifice in the cause of a common Protestantism. Thus the passing of an Act, which, until a late period, inflicted a social wrong upon two large sections of the community, is to be attributed to the course pursued by the very parties whose successors became the sufferers.