were held out to the Presbyterians that their rites and usages would continue part of the rites and usages of the Church of England, that is to say, of the Church in possession. It is idle, therefore, to assert, that the meaning of the Sacramental Test at that time could be to exclude Presbyterians or Protestant Dissenters from corporations. I may be asked, "What was the meaning?" I confess the subject is involved in some obscurity. The conjecture I am about to hazard may not be actually proved by history, but yet whatever might be the intention of the clause, I confidently assert, that it was not, and could not be, to prevent Protestant Dissenters from being or becoming members of corporations, and that for the reasons I have stated, and others that I will state by and by; but perhaps the House will give me leave now to explain what my conjecture is, and what are the grounds upon which I rest it. I desire your Lordships to receive it as conjecture only; I do not pronounce it as fact, "Valeat, quantum valere potest."

In explaining it, I must mention a fact, curious indeed, but yet not redounding to the credit of men otherwise entitled to our respect. I fear I must include in the censure that truly patriotic nobleman, Lord Southampton, who, at the period of which I speak, seems to have taken an active part in this House, as active indeed as Lord Clarendon himself. The fact I allude to is related by Carte, in his Life of the Duke of Ormonde,* and has been

* Vol. II. pp. 254-256. After relating that the Duke of Ormonde discovered the King's religion to be Roman Catholic at Cologne; that Sir Henry Bennett and Lord Bristol corroborated that fact; that the match with Portugal was resolved upon soon after the Restoration, without the knowledge of himself or Lord Clarendon, and persisted in, on very frivolous pretences, in spite of the remonstrances of the latter, and that the Duke of Ormonde attributed that resolution to the King's predilection for the Roman Catholic religion, Carte goes on to say,

"He" (Ormonde) "had kept the discovery of the King's change a secret from his friend the chancellor all the time they were abroad together, but now he thought it necessary to discover it to him and the Earl of Southampton, that they might agree on some measures to prevent as well the King's being prevailed upon to declare himself, as the Roman Catholic priests publishing his secretly embracing their religion. They apprehended very ill consequences from either of them, and agreed that, as soon as the new Parliament should meet, a clause should be inserted in some act to make it a præmunire for

confirmed by the testimony of contemporaries, which subsequent publications, in the course of the last half century, have disclosed. The Duke of Ormonde, while residing abroad with Charles II. at Cologne, discovered, to his sorrow and dismay, that the exiled prince, whose fortunes he was following, was unquestionably a Roman Catholic. He discovered the circumstance by an accidental disclosure of his habits of devotion; and his discovery was confirmed by the concurrent testimony of Sir Henry Bennett, afterwards Lord Arlington, and of Lord Bristol. He felt all the importance, he dreaded all the consequences, of the fact he had discovered; but he kept it secret from his friends, and even from his dearest friend, Lord Clarendon, nor did he divulge it to him, until after their arrival in England. Soon after the Restoration, it was found that the King, from motives unknown to Clarendon or Southampton, had determined to marry a Roman Catholic, the Infanta of Portugal. The Duke of Ormonde, naturally suspecting the real, but hidden, motive of this determination, disclosed the result of his observations and inquiries about the King's religion to his two great political friends and associates. Hereupon the three statesmen held a council as to what was to be done on so momentous and alarming an occasion. My Lords, I blush to relate the result of this grave deliberation. It is painful to expose the iniquities of men generally good. They thought, and justly thought, that the knowledge of the fact might renew the trou bles of the kingdom, create suspicion among Protestants, and by elating the hopes of the Roman Catholics, encourage them to promote plots both at home and abroad. They thought, moreover, that, combined with the King's connexion with the Court of France, the fact itself might facilitate designs against the liberties of the country. Well, then, what did they do in this emergency? Oh Gloria!

These wise and good men, for such I allow them, espe cially Lord Southampton, generally to have been, determined to bring in a law to make it a præmunire to say that the King was a Papist! A law to despoil every man of his property for saying that which they had ascertained to be true; and to do so because they had ascertained it to

any person to say that the King was a Papist. This was the first act that passed for the security of His Majesty's person and government."

be true! One is really sorry to relate such anecdotes, and yet when Noble Lords talk, as they are a little too prone to do, of the virtue and wisdom of our ancestors, it is, I own, somewhat tempting, and may prove not altogether unwholesome, to bring to light the peccadilloes which some of the best of them committed in their time. These great statesmen knew that the King was a Papist; they knew it from the Duke of Ormonde, and yet they devised and passed a law to subject any innocent or honourable man who should do by others what the Duke of Ormonde had done by them, namely, communicate what was true, to the forfeiture of his goods and chattels, and to all the heavy penalties of a præmunire. I would fain believe, and I do, that they, and especially Southampton, when they resorted to such shameful and unjustifiable means of protecting the prince from annoyance, were equally anxious to do something for the security of the people, I am inclined to think that, with that view, the Test to which I have been referring was introduced by this House, and perhaps by Lord Southampton himself, into the Corporation Act. They might, from the discovery they had made, have become anxious to keep Roman Catholics out of corporations. They might reasonably argue thus-"We are driving out of corporations large bodies of these Covenanters and Puritans; we really have not cavaliers and partizans enough who are Protestants to fill the vacancies, The consequence will be, there will be many Roman Catholics elected, and when the King shall find that party strong, for which he has a secret predilection, he may harbour further designs, and avow them; and when they, the Papists, learn that the King is of their religion, they may be tempted to aspire to an ascendancy, of which, in any other circumstances, they must despair. To provide against all this, let us endeavour to keep Roman Catholics out of corporations; and here is an opportunity of doing it, as it were, clandestinely slip into this Corporation Act a Test which none who is not a Protestant can possibly take."

As I before remarked, I give this merely as a conjecture. It is, however, clear from our Journals, that Southampton attended the Bill constantly; and history reports him as taking an active part in the progress of it. But, while I am not prepared to describe my conjecture as unquestionably true, I am prepared boldly to defy contradiction when that there is no ground for supposing that the clause

say,

was directed against Protestant Dissenters. It could not apply at the time to any Protestant Dissenters. All, or nearly all, would have taken it without scruple. It has indeed been said, that Independents would not; but, even if there is any truth in that exception, which I doubt, it extended to very few of that denomination.

The truth is, that occasional conformity was practised by all Protestant Dissenters down to the time of the reign of Queen Anne, when the Act against it was passed, and at the period of which I am now speaking, it was not only practised and allowed by the strictest among them, but actually enjoined as a duty. Baxter, their great authority, so considered it. He, and they who followed him, deemed schism a crime; and, wherever a Protestant Church was established, even though it retained rites which in their judgment were objectionable, may actually abominations, they nevertheless remained in communion with that Church, and enjoined occasional conformity as a duty.

The Reverend Lords will bear me out in this statement. The practice of an occasional conformity continued, with some individual exceptions, through the whole reign of Charles II., and endured to the time of Queen Anne. This your Lordships should bear in mind; for, when people talk of the authority of an Act of Parliament, of the wisdom of our ancestors, the test of long experience, and other matters of that kind, as affecting this question, let it be always recollected that these vaunted Acts, so wise, so expedient, so provident, have never been in actual force, never practically executed, for more than three, or at the most, seven years, during the whole hundred and fifty-six that they have remained on your statute-book-that is, the period between the passing the Occasional Conformity Bill, and its repeal, which was, if I mistake not, in 1718.

This remark applies to both the Acts-but I return to the Corporation Act, and, though the effect of it has, in some respects, been greater than that of the Test Act, I insist upon its spirit, its intent, and its enactments, being entirely different. Not only the penalty inflicted for omission was milder, but it must never be forgotten, the test imposed, though by subsequent events it became the same, was, at the time of passing the first Act, unknown, uncertain, and undetermined. They who imposed it could not know what it was, nor positively foresee what it would be, nor consequently whom it would admit or whom it would

exclude. The penalty was merely the loss of the place, nor did the Act insist on a man taking the Sacrament on his accepting office. That holy rite was not made the stepping-stone to worldly advantage. The person elected, or appointed, was obliged to bring proofs, or certificates, of having, within a certain time, two years I thinkLord ELDON. One year.

Lord HOLLAND. I thank my Noble and Learned Friend; one year, then taken the Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England; and this provision was not to take place till two years after the passing of the Act. Now, how could the legislators of that day antici pate future legislation any more than we can do? Unless they did, how could they know before-hand what the test they were prescribing would two years afterwards be? Suppose the Act of Uniformity had not passed, what then would have been the effect of the Corporation Act which passed before it? Why, it would have stood thus: All persons accepting office in a corporation, must have taken the Sacrament according to the rites of the Presbyterian Church, or rather, according to the individual whim of the officiating parish minister, who might decide what those rites, in the particular instance, should be. The general design of the Corporation Act was to effect a purpose possibly salutary, possibly necessary, but certainly of a temporary nature. Many of its provisions have expired, others are repealed; and in those points, as in others, it forms a complete contrast to the Test Act, and is as much at variance with it, in its subsequent fate and treatment, as it was in its original design, history, and principle.

The Test Act, to which I now come, was founded on a distrust of the exercise of the prerogative; it sprung from a deep-rooted suspicion in the public, of the possessor of, and a yet deeper of the presumptive heir to, the Crown. It was wrested from the King; he had recourse to every subterfuge to avoid it. The Money Bill was actually withheld until the Crown had given its consent to the Test Act. It was, in truth, a stigma, perhaps well merited, but a stigma fixed on the reigning Prince and his family, and it was known and felt to be an invasion of what had always been the true, ancient, and lawful prerogative of the Crown.

That such was the case, no man who reads the history of the times can, for one moment, doubt. It followed the