d. 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