dom and independence of the people, which were imputed to
the Roman Catholics, gave birth to the statutes depriving both
Protestant and Roman Catholic Non-conformists of all legislative and
political power. The restrictions thus imposed on the Presbyterians and
other Protestant sects had, as we have seen, been gradually relaxed by a
periodical act of indemnity. Indeed, after the Union with Scotland, it
was impossible with any show of consistency to maintain them, since, as
it has been already pointed out, after Presbyterianism had been
recognized as the established religion of Scotland, it would have seemed
strangely unreasonable to regard it as a disqualification on the
southern side of the Border. But, as long as the Stuart princes were
from time to time disquieting the government by their open invasions or
secret intrigues, no such relaxation could with safety be granted to the
Roman Catholics, since it could hardly be expected that they would
forbear to employ any power which they might acquire for the service of
a prince of their own religion. That danger, however, which ever since
1745 had been a very shadowy one, had wholly passed away with the life
of the last Stuart lay prince, Charles Edward; and his death left the
rulers of the kingdom and advisers of the sovereign free to take a
different and larger view of their duty to the nation as a whole.

It was notorious that the number of Non-conformists was large. In the
middle of the last century it had received a considerable accession
through the institution of the new sect of Wesleyan Methodists; which,
through the supineness of the clergy of the Established Church in that
generation, had gradually increased, till it was estimated that the
various Dissenting sects in England equalled at least half the number of
the members of the Established Church. In Wales they were believed to
form the majority. In Scotland three-fourths of the people were
Presbyterians; and in Ireland the Roman Catholics outnumbered the
Protestants in nearly the same proportion. Taking England, Wales,
Scotland, and Ireland together, a calculation which reckoned the
different sects of Protestant and Roman Catholic Non-conformists united
at half the entire population would probably not have erred very widely
from the truth.

It must have been the aim of every statesman deserving of the name to
weld these different religious parties into one harmonious whole, as far
as their civil position wen