ers as the price of
Emancipation.

No measure that had ever been framed since the Revolution had caused
such excitement in the country; but the preponderance of feeling in its
favor was equally marked in both Houses of Parliament. In the House of
Commons 320 supported it, while only 142 could be marshalled against it.
In the House of Lords 213 divided for it against 109. And in April it
received the royal assent.

The general policy of removing the disabilities it is not necessary to
discuss here. It is quite clear that the Clare election had rendered it
impossible to maintain them. And if some of those who judge of measures
solely by their effects still denounce this act, as one which has failed
in its object of tranquillizing Ireland, many of those who admit the
failure ascribe it to the omission to accompany it by one securing a
state endowment for the Roman Catholic clergy, pronouncing it, without
that appendage, a half measure, such as rarely succeeds, and never
deserves success. However that may be, it is certain that the measure,
coupled with the repeal of the Test Act of the previous year, was one
which made a great and permanent change in the practical working of the
constitution of the kingdom, as it had been interpreted for the last one
hundred and fifty years. Of that constitution one of the leading
features, ever since the Restoration, had been understood to be the
establishment and maintenance of the political as well as the
ecclesiastical ascendency of the Church of England. On that ascendency
the repeal of the Test Act in 1828 had made the first, and that a great,
inroad, and the present statute entirely abolished it as a principle of
government. So far as political privileges went, every Christian sect
was now placed on a footing of complete equality. But so to place them
may fairly be regarded as having been required not only by justice and
expediency, but by reasons drawn from the history of the nation and from
the circumstances under which these disabilities had been imposed.
Before the Rebellion no one was excluded from the English Parliament on
account of his religion, whether he was a Roman Catholic, a
Presbyterian, or a member of any other of the various sects which were
gradually arising in the country. It was not till after the Restoration
that a recollection of the crimes of the Puritans, when they had got the
upper-hand, and the fear of machinations and intrigues, incompatible
with the free