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    and its dependencies , must present a medley of patchwork legislation which earnidt be paralleled by any other anomaly of oar variegated codes * Were lie to derive his impressions from our statute book , apart from the history of the . contrariant principles and complex influences which have brought k into its present state , how confused must * be every conception which he might attempt to form of the past and existing policy of our Protestant Government towards Nonconformists of different descriptions t And howlittlfc of clearness

    and definiteness would his conceptions acquire by an acquaintance with the past and present state of religioias sects , and the practical situation of Dissenters from the Established Church with respect to civil and military employments ! The original enactment of the Corporation and Test Acts our inquirer would find to be accounted for , if not completely justified , by political exigencies which have long since passed away , and present at this time as little solid ground for distinction between the members of the community , as would

    the alleged adherence of their ancestors to the factions of the Red or the White Roses . Nay , he would find that , by a strange fatality , the Protestant Dissenters , who , as a body , are alone entitled to plead an undivided attachment to the principles by which the Throne has been held since the glorious Revolution of 1688 , have had the edge of a law turned upon them which was intended to exclude from places of trust a royal faction which threatened the extirpation of both the civil and religious liberties of the country . We do not deny that the Corporation Act was primarily designed to enable the

    Crown to expel from corporate offices the adherents to the Protector ' s Government , a precaution which the precarious state of the restored dynasty justified upon the urgent plea of self-preservation ; yet , even in this Act , the Sacramental Test was , it seems , an after-thought of the Lords , and assented to by the Commons in the way of compromise with the Upper House , which had liberally proposed to compliment the Crown with the perpetual nomination of the principal officers of every corporationr But when we arrive at the sera of the more general Test Act ( 25 th Charles II . j , we shall find that

    this jealousy of the Presbyterian and other Dissenters was in a great measure confined to the Court , and that they were , tn the Lower House especially , confided in as staunch and uncompromising adversaries to the mad designs of the Monarch and his courtiers . What can be a more unequivocal commentary upon the object of this law than a bare statement of the existing exigency ? The powers of the executive Government were committed into the hands of the Duke of York and other declared Catholics , and an army , raised without the sanction of Parliament , commanded by a foreigner , and

    including many Roman Catholic officers , was encamped at Blackheath , and prepared to controul the proceedings of Parliament , if the better genius of Charles had not prompted him to retire from a conflict which would probably have cost him his crown , if not his life . This Parliament , be it remembered , included amongst its members several Protestant Dissenters , who , in ! the spirit of self-sacrifice , consented to put in jeopardy a part of their most valuable rights , in order to aim a decisive blow at the enemies of the whole .

    Nor was their support of a measure which seemed necessary to avert the threatened crisis chargeable with any gross want of prudent caution ; for in the very same session a Bill for the Toleration of Protestant Dissenters had passed the House of Commons and was entertained by the Lords ; a motion for incapacitating them from serving as members of the House had been negatived by a large majority ; and whilst the Test Act , with a design not to be mistaken , imposed on the holders of any office , civil or military , or any command or placet of trust under his Majesty , the obligation of taking the

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    Corporation and Test AtiBs . $ 7

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1827, page 27, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1792/page/27/