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the Bill of Repeal or of risking the defeat of the measure , it is the judgment of this Committee that the Declaration should be so shaped as to be least injurious and offensive ; and that it should be fully explained to the Legislature and the country , that it is imposed upon them , and not Revised by them , nor agreeable to their mature sense of right . - But that if the Declaration cannot be
so modelled as to be innoxious in the estimation of the great body of the Protestant Dissenters of the Three Denominations , it is the opinion of this Committee that they should ill discharge the trust confided to them , and the duty which they owe to their country and their posterity , if they did not declare decidedly that the interests of truth aud
liberty require the Bill to be abandoned . In the attempt to shape the Declaration into a form that may be least vexatious to Dissenters , it is the opinion of this Committee that special care should be taken that the Declaration should be « o worded , in reference to the Established Church , as to imply only the
disavowal of designs against it which would in fact be illegal , and not by any possible construction to be made to apply to those acts and proceedings in which the Dissenters are already protected by the law for the maintenance of their religious principles ; and that the disavowal in the Declaration should be confined to such intents and acts as are
connected with and limited to the office or trust , on entering upon which the Declaration may be required . In yielding to the sense of Parliament with regard to any Declaration whatever , this Committee would suggest to their Parliamentary friends that such conces * sion in any degree should only be made upon the full understanding that the Repeal Bill will be carried into a law .
And finally , this Committee cannot assent to any form of Declaration , however unobjectionable in other respects , which shall be imposed upon them as Dissenters , and not upon the rest of the community , since this partiality would fix upon them anew , the . stigma which is one of their chief objections to the Test laws , whose repeal they are seeking . 18 M March , 1828 .
Lord John Russell moved the reading of the order of the day for the House to take into consideration in Committee , the Bill for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts . Mr . Sturges Bourne rose to address the House . It appeared that the House
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had determined by no small majority , that the Sacramental Test on Dissenters should bs abolished . All agreed that the practice now sought to be abolished , was one which occasionally gave rise to scenes of the most revolting hypocrisy and sacrilege . No one was more anx ~ ious than he , that that test should be
doue away with ; buc there were many on the other side , who conscientiously believed that a teat of some description should be imposed upon Disseuters tak * ing up office . It was to reconcile , if possible , both classes , that he ( Mr . Si Bourne ) rose to move that a declaration should be substituted for the test hi *
therto imposed upon the Dissenters . He -would propose , not an oath , but a declaration to be solemnly taken and subscribed to ; he would not have an oath , because he was adverse to the multipli * cation of oaths unceasingly . ( Hear ) . The Declaration was as follows : "I , A . B ., do sincerely affirm and declare that I will not exercise any power or authority to be vested in ine by virtue of
the office of . for the Duroose of the office of , for the purpose of subverting , or endeavouring to subvert the legal rights and privileges of the United Church of England and Ireland , or of the Church of Scotland . " Lord Eastnor , though he had voted in the minority , fully concurred with the motion of Mr . Bourne , which he seconded . Such a proposition removed his objections to the repeal .
Lord John Russell said , that he wa $ ready thus early to offer himself to the notice of the House upon the new ques * - tion . submitted to their consideration . The noble Lord who spoke last was right in saying that neither he ( Lord John Russell ) nor any of his friends or supporters had either proposed or prepared any test as a substitute for that which
they were anxious to revoke , as the law now stood respecting the Dissenters . They had asked for the total repeal of the existing law . And notwithstanding what had fallen from Mr . S . Bourne , he could not help thinking that the unqualified repeal wa « what was meant by the great majority who had pronounced their opinions upon this subject
on a former night . He hoped the House would allow him to congratulate them upon the different condition in which this great question was now placed , from that it had occupied on any former occasion . It wan put fairly and plainly in a different form by the Right Hon . Gentleman , who had , in his amendment , proposed no assertion of the ( he hoped ) obsolete principle of inherent religious
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Ibtdligencbt ^ -Corporation and Tmt Ag 4 Ju SfiJ
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1828, page 277, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2559/page/61/
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