e purpose of receiving office. Such, said his lordship, were the
consequences of mixing politics with religion. Political dissensions
were aggravated by the venom of theological disputes, and religion
profaned by the vices of ambition; making it both hateful to man and
offensive to God. The only answers, continued his lordship, which could
be made to these objections, were that the dissenters, in consequence
of the Indemnity Act, suffered no real hardship, and that the law in its
present state was necessary to the security of the church. But neither
of these positions was true. The practical grievance suffered by the
dissenters was much heavier than the legal grievances appearing on the
face of the statutes: even the indemnity act was passed on the ground
that the omission to qualify had proceeded from ignorance, absence, or
unavoidable accident, and thus refused all relief to those in whom the
omission flowed from conscientious scruples. The fact was, that many
dissenters refused to take office on such degrading terms; they refused
to attain by a fraud upon the statute, honours and emoluments which the
law declared they should not attain in any other way. In conclusion his
lordship remarked;--"I have proved that these acts violate the sacred
rights of conscience, and are of the nature of religious persecution;
I have shown that so far from not having inflicted any hardship on
the body upon whom they operate, they are fraught with great mischief,
irritation, and injustice; and I have shown that they are totally at
variance with our own policy in Scotland and Ireland, as well as with
the enlightened legislation of all the Christian countries of Europe. If
I am asked what advantage the country is to derive from the abrogation
of such laws, I answer, that the obvious tendency of the measure,
independently of its justice, will be to render the dissenters better
affected to the government; to inspire them with dispositions to bear
the heavy burdens imposed on them by the necessities of the state with
cheerfulness, or at least, with resignation; and above all, it will be
more consonant to the tone and spirit of the age than the existence
of those angry, yet inefficient and impracticable laws, which are a
disgrace to the statute-book." This motion was seconded by Mr. J. Smith,
and ably supported by Lords Milton, Althorp, and Nugent, and by Messrs.
Brougham, Ferguson, and Palmer. One of its most powerful advocates was
Mr. Ferguso