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    sates from the Protestant Dissenters of England and Walts , uppointed to obtain the repeal of the

    Test Laws , cannot adjourn our meetings for this year , without addressing pur constituents on the specific object of our appointment , and on other objects , which appear to us to be immediately connected with the general interests of Protestant Dissenters ; to which the great cause of religious

    liberty is so closely united . While we have endeavoured to promote rhe union of dissenters ^ upon the grand principles which are common to them all , by expressing , in the most public manner , a sympathetic regard for our suffering brethren at Birmingham ^ we have not been inattentive to the important purpose for which we

    were constituted ; we have wished again to agitate the repeal of the Test Laws , and to present a claim so reasonable as ours to the justice of a British House of

    Commons ; nor should we have hesitated to improve even the slightest appearance of a favourable opportunity , knowing that the cause of reason and justice cannot suffer by the severest discussion ; but > when We considered that the flame

    of bigotry , which lately ravaged one part of the kingdom , was not yet extinguished ; and when we recollected the various prejudices excited by misrepresentations among our countrymen at large , prejudices which time and a more just observation alone can remove ;

    we were convinced , that the case of the Protestant Dissenters , respecting the Test Laws , was not likely to gain an impartial attention during the present session of Parliament , and we are confirmed in this opinion , by observing the

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    ill-success of a wise and virtuous attempt to rescue the Statute-Book of our country from the disgrace of laws so oppressive and infamous that , even in the judgment of their

    supporters , they ought never to be executed . — On this occasion we cannot forbear to express our alarms at the present situation of religious liberty in this country , and the precarious tenure by which we all hold the invaluable

    lights of conscience ; for . though , of the Protestant Dissenters who lately joined in the petition to the House of Commons for the repeal of certain penal laws , ( which repeal even our enemies had

    formerly acknowledged to be necessary to render toleration complete , ) it may fairly be presumed , that many were peTso , ns immediately obnoxious to the severity of those laws , yet we are persuaded ^

    that our brethren of every theological opinion , must feel an important interest in thik question ; even the Christian , who believes the doctrine which some of those laws

    were designed to support , may tremble for the existence 6 f his religious liberty , while it depends

    on an accidental coincidence with the faith of ^ he established church , arid riot on the unaliehable right of every irian to examine relig ion

    freely , to form his own opinions , and to diffuse them in the world with a zeal proportioned to his sense of their importance . To eUi his , fotindedbna rigli t so sacked , nothing has been opposed but the plea of expediency ,

    an argument weak in the judgment of reason , however forrtiidnble ih the hand of power ; and we were sorry to observe this argument offered by persons who so lately declared , in the most

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    416 Address of theDeputies , 1792 .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1811, page 416, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2418/page/32/