However that may be, it is certain that the measure,
coupled with the repeal of the Test Act of the previous year, was one
which made a great and permanent change in the practical working of the
constitution of the kingdom, as it had been interpreted for the last one
hundred and fifty years. Of that constitution one of the leading
features, ever since the Restoration, had been understood to be the
establishment and maintenance of the political as well as the
ecclesiastical ascendency of the Church of England. On that ascendency
the repeal of the Test Act in 1828 had made the first, and that a great,
inroad, and the present statute entirely abolished it as a principle of
government. So far as political privileges went, every Christian sect
was now placed on a footing of complete equality. But so to place them
may fairly be regarded as having been required not only by justice and
expediency, but by reasons drawn from the history of the nation and from
the circumstances under which these disabilities had been imposed.
Before the Rebellion no one was excluded from the English Parliament on
account of his religion, whether he was a Roman Catholic, a
Presbyterian, or a member of any other of the various sects which were
gradually arising in the country. It was not till after the Restoration
that a recollection of the crimes of the Puritans, when they had got the
upper-hand, and the fear of machinations and intrigues, incompatible
with the freedom and independence of the people, which were imputed to
the Roman Catholics, gave birth to the statutes depriving both
Protestant and Roman Catholic Non-conformists of all legislative and
political power.
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