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