The constitution, as it had existed for the last hundred and forty years, had been not only a Protestant but a Church of England constitution. Not only all Roman Catholics, but all members of Protestant Non-conforming sects, all who refused to sign a declaration against the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and also to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the one Established Church, were disqualified for any appointment of trust. That the object with which the Test Act had been framed and supported was rather political than religious is notorious; indeed, it was supported by the Protestant Dissenters, though they themselves were to suffer by its operation, so greatly at that time did the dread of Popery and the French King overpower every other consideration.[192] On the Roman Catholics, after the reign of James II. had increased that apprehension, the restrictions were tightened. But those which inflicted disabilities on the Protestant Non-conformists had been gradually relaxed. The repeal of two, the Five Mile and the Conventicle Acts, had, as we have seen in the last chapter, been recent measures of Lord Liverpool. But the Test Act still remained, though it had long been practically a dead letter. The Union with Scotland, where the majority of the population was Presbyterian, had rendered it almost impossible to maintain the exclusion of Englishmen resembling the Scotch in their religious tenets from preferments, and even from seats in the House of Commons, to which Scotchmen were admissible. And though one Prime-minister (Stanhope) failed in his attempt to induce Parliament to repeal the Test Act, and his successor (Walpole) refused his countenance to any repetition of the proposal, even he did not reject such a compromise as was devised to evade it; and in the first year of George II.'s reign (by which time it was notorious that many Protestant Non-conformists had obtained seats in municipal corporations, and even in the House of Commons, who yet had never qualified themselves by compliance with the act of 1673) a bill of indemnity was introduced by the minister, with at least the tacit consent of the English bishops, to protect all such persons from the penalties which they had incurred. And the bill, which was only annual in its operation, was renewed almost every year, till, in respect of all such places or dignities (if a seat in the House of Commons can be described by either of those names), no one thought of inquiring whether a man, so long as he were a Protestant, adhered to the Established Church or not; members of the House of Commons even openly avowing their nonconformity, and at times founding arguments on the fact.
The practical nullification of the Test Act by these periodical bills of indemnity had been for some time used by two opposite parties-both that which regarded the maintenance of the exclusive connection of the constitution with the Church of England as of vital importance to both Church and constitution, and that which was opposed to all restrictions or disqualiflcations on religious grounds-as an argument in their favor. The one contended that there could be no sufficient reason for repealing a law from which no one suffered; the other, that it was a needless provocation of ill-feeling to retain a law which no one ever dreamed of enforcing. Hitherto the latter had been the weaker party. One or two motions for the repeal of the Test Act, which had been made in former years,[193] had been defeated without attracting any great notice; but in the spring of 1828 Lord John Russel, then a comparatively young member, but rapidly rising into influence with his party, carried a motion in the House of Commons for leave to bring in a bill to repeal the act, so far as it concerned the Protestant Non-conformists, by a very decisive majority,[194] in spite of all the efforts of Peel and his colleagues.
The ministry was placed in a difficult position by his success, since the usual practice for a cabinet defeated on a question of principle was to resign; and it is probable that they would not have departed from that rule now, had not this defeat occurred so early in their official life. But on this occasion it seemed to them that other questions had to be considered besides the constitutional doctrine of submission on the part of a ministry to the judgment of the Parliament.[195] Theirs was now the fourth administration that had held office within twelve months; and their resignation, which would compel the construction of a fifth, could hardly fail not only to embarrass the sovereign, but to shake public confidence in government generally. It was also certain that they could rely on a division in the House of Lords being favorable to them, if they chose to appeal from one House to the other. Under these circumstances, they had to consider what their line of conduct should be, and there never were two ministers better suited to deal with an embarrassment of that kind than the Duke of Wellington and Mr. Peel. The Duke's doctrine of government was that "the country was never governed in practice according to the extreme principles of any party whatever;"[196] while Peel's disposition at all times inclined him to compromise. He was quite aware that on this and similar questions public feeling had undergone great alteration since the beginning of the century. There was a large and increasing party, numbering in its ranks many men of deep religious feeling, and many firm supporters of the principle of an Established Church, being also sincere believers in the pre-eminent excellence of the Church of England, who had a conscientious repugnance to the employment of the most solemn ordinance of a religion as a mere political test of a person's qualifications for the discharge of civil duties. In the opinion of the Bishop of Oxford (Dr. Lloyd), this was the feeling of "a very large majority of the Church itself," and of the University.[197] Peel, therefore, came to the conclusion-to which he had no difficulty in bringing his colleague, the Prime-minister-that "it might be more for the real interests of the Church and of religion to consent to an alteration in the law" than to trust to the result of the debate in the House of Lords to maintain the existing state of things. Accordingly, after several conferences with the most influential members of the Episcopal Bench, he framed a declaration to be substituted for the Sacramental test, binding all who should be required to subscribe it-a description which included all who should be appointed to a civil or corporate office-never to exert any power or influence which they might thus acquire to subvert, or to endeavor to subvert, the Protestant Church of England, Scotland, or Ireland, as by law established. The declaration was amended in the House of Lords by the addition of the statement, that this declaration was subscribed "on the true faith of a Christian," introduced at the instigation of Lord Eldon, who had not held the Great Seal since the dissolution of Lord Liverpool's administration, but who was still looked up to by a numerous party as the foremost champion of sound Protestantism in either House.
Not that the addition of these words at all diminished the dissatisfaction with which the great lawyer regarded the bill. On the contrary, he believed it to be not only a weapon wilfully put into the hands of the enemies of the Established Church, but a violation of the constitution, of which, as he regarded it "the existing securities were a part." He pointed out that "the King himself was obliged to take the sacrament at his coronation;" and he argued from this and other grounds that "the Church of England, combined with the state, formed together the constitution of Great Britain; and that the acts now to be repealed were necessary to the preservation of that constitution."