It may fairly be
said that the credit of Parliament and of the nation was concerned in
the abrogation of laws so ridiculously oppressive, and not the less
obnoxious for being practically invalid. And in the same spirit another
measure was framed and carried by the Lord Chancellor, whose object was
the confirmation of religious endowments belonging to different sects of
Protestant Dissenters, and their protection from vexatious and unjust
litigation, by making a continued possession of any kind of endowment or
property for twenty years a valid title.
These enactments may be regarded as indispensable supplements to the
repeal of the Test Act and Catholic Emancipation. They were the
coping-stone of the great edifice of religious toleration, of which the
former acts had laid the foundation. And the next year Peel carried out
still farther the same principle, by a measure which could not fail to
be regarded as an especial boon in Ireland, since the great majority of
the population of that kingdom were of the Roman Catholic persuasion. It
has been seen that when the troubled state into which the Continent was
thrown by the French Revolution threw hinderances in the way of the
Irish students designed for the Roman Catholic priesthood going to one
of the great Continental colleges, such as St.
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