Though the abolition of the Writ has most probably not saved a single heretic from the flames, yet it was a step towards the perfection of the Constitution, whereby, according to the Law as it stood at the close of the reign of Charles II., none but women for their crimes could be burned alive.

The popular anticipation of stakes under a Popish Successor towards the close of the reign of Charles II., may be collected from Lord Russell's gladness, that he fell by the axe and not by fire, and from Andrew Marvell :

More dreadful fires approach your falling town,

Than those which turn'd your stately structures down,
Such fatal fires as once in Smithfield shone.

If e'er he be King, I know Britain's doom,

We must all to the stake, or be converts to Rome.

The Toleration of Dissenters commenced earlier than that of the Catholics; the first step in this meritorious cause was the Toleration Act of William and Mary. Locke, in a letter to a friend concerning that Act, writes, that it was framed "Non ea forsan latitudine, qua tu, et tui similes, veri, et sine ambitione veri, Christiani optarent; sed aliquid est prodire tenus. His initiis jacta spero sunt libertatis et pacis fundamenta, quibus stabilienda olim erit Christi Ecclesia." The Toleration Act legalised registered Conventicles with open doors; it rendered Dissenters no longer criminals in the eye of the law, from which various consequences followed, that are not specified in the Act. Persecution of Dissenters was revived in the latter period of the reign of Anne by the Schism and Occasional Conformity Acts, which proceeded from the same intolerant spirit that had animated the legislature of Charles II. These Acts, however, were repealed at the accession of the House of Hanover. Since which period Liberty of Conscience in England has obtained considerable relief, and been subjected to no outrages from the enact

ments of the Legislature'. Not long after the end of the reign of George II., it was adjudged by the House of Lords, upon the broadest principles of toleration laid down by Lord Mansfield, that Nonconformity with the Established Church is not an offence connived at, but is recognised by Law.

If the relaxation of persecuting Laws on the score of religion may appear to have been dealt out in this Country in a very tardy and niggardly manner, and, as regards Roman Catholics at least, with much reluctance; the cause may be explained, not solely on the supposition of national bigotry and intolerance, but, in part, by reference to circumstances of political history. There may be much weight also due to the representations of Burke on this subject, in a speech to the Electors of Bristol; though, it is gratifying to reflect, that, since his time Toleration has become a more prominent feature in our Constitution. "We have left," said Burke, "this good work in the rude unfinished state in which good works are commonly left, through the tame circumspection with which a timid prudence so frequently enervates beneficence. In doing good we are generally cold, and languid and sluggish; and, of all things, afraid of being too much in the right. But the works of malice and injustice are quite in another style. They are finished with a bold masterly hand; touched as they are with the spirit of those vehement passions that call forth all our energies whenever we oppress and persecute.”

II. Religious Disabilities.

Blackstone adduces as examples of the vigor at which the Constitution had arrived in the reign of Charles II., the Corporation and Test Acts, which, he writes, "secure both our civil and religious liberties." Fox omits this point of panegyric on

1 A detailed account of the relief afforded at different periods in the profession and exercise of religion, to sectaries of various denominations, will be found in the first of the second series of Reports of the Criminal Law Commissioners.

the reign of Charles II. In the year 1790, he had moved, in the House of Commons, for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. In one of the most eloquent of his speeches, he designated these acts as oppressive, and dictated by a spirit of intolerance and persecution; he pointed out the injustice of their principle, in adopting an indirect political test by means of a religious test, and disqualifying a large portion of the Community to their own injury and to depriving the State of their services, not for their conduct but for their religious opinions. On the Sacramental Test, he observes, "What! was any specific mode of administering the Lord's Supper to be considered as a Cornerstone of the Constitution? A Constitution with such a rotten foundation, is, in my opinion, not worth preserving."

(a) Corporation Act.

In the Corporation Act, a religious test is combined with a political test. The Act, though plainly indicative of vindictive feelings towards Dissenters, would seem to have been passed mainly because it was an effectual means of excluding persons inimical to the Restoration from offices in Corporations by means of which they might do the new government disservice, especially in the matters of elections for Members of Parliament, and of returns of Juries.

At the period of the Restoration, religious opinion was really a practical test of political attachment or disaffection to government. Lord Clarendon, therefore, in promoting the Corporation Act, may have urged for his royal master the excuse of Dido:

Res dura, et regni novitas me talia cogunt

Moliri.

But to regard this Act as a permanent bulwark of the Constitution would be to assume a perpetuity of bad government, which should never reconcile Dissenters to a monarchy, even after the revival of a Commonwealth had been abandoned, and

although they were not otherwise goaded to disaffection by religious persecution.

The Corporation Act of 1661, (13th Charles II. Stat. 2. ch. 1,) was passed at the hey-day of the Restoration, in the first session of the first Parliament called by Charles II., and which was filled with Cavaliers devoted to the King, and the Church Establishment, who hated and feared the Dissenters, and had suffered a long score of injuries to be retaliated.

The title of the Act is "An Act for the well governing and regulating of Corporations;" and its significant Preamble: "Whereas questions are likely to arise concerning the validity of elections of Magistrates, and other officers and members in Corporations, as well in respect of removing some, and placing others, during the late troubles, contrary to the true intent and meaning of their charters and liberties; and to the end that the succession in such Corporations may be most probably perpetuated in the hands of persons well affected to his Majesty and the established government, it being too well known, that, notwithstanding all his Majesty's endeavours, and unparalleled indulgence in pardoning all that is past, nevertheless many evil spirits are still working."

Under the provisions of the Act, Commissioners were appointed who had the power of placing and displacing Corporate Officers of every description, as they should "deem expedient for the public safety," until the 25th of March, 1663. A qualification for office was provided, whereby Corporate Officers should all have taken the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, "according to the rites of the Church of England," within one year next before their elections, and, upon being elected, should take the oaths of allegiance and of supremacy, and the following oath: "I, A. B., do declare and believe that it is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the King, and that I do abhor that traitorous position of taking arms by his authority against his person, or, against those that are commissioned by him:"

besides subscribing a Declaration against the Solemn League and Covenant.

It is to be noticed that the Corporation Act affords the earliest instance of the imposition of the Oath of Non-resistance. Locke writes with regard to it: "The first step was made in the Act for regulating Corporations; wisely beginning that in those lesser governments which they meant afterwards to introduce upon the government of the nation; so that many of the wealthiest and soberest men are still kept out of the Magistracy of those places." With regard to the Commissioners, they held a species of dictatorship from the 19th of December, 1661, to the 25th of March, 1663, after which time it was hoped that the Mayors, Sheriffs and other officers they had appointed, would have been able to hand down the torch of loyalty in full blaze to successors whose elections they should, by virtue of their offices, have secured for the Court.

Notwithstanding London had been illuminated in all its streets and purlieus with the burning of rumps1, and the republican inscription under the niche, where had stood the statue of Charles I. in the Royal Exchange, had been effaced by the whitewasher, the Corporation of London appears to have afforded early symptoms of refractoriness, which might have made the Church party at least desirous of exchanging its officers for others professing more reverence for Bishops. Thus Pepys, in his Diary, under the date of the 20th of March, 1661, writes, "The great talk of the town is, the strange election that the City of London made yesterday for Parliament men; viz. Fowke, Love, Jones and Thompson, men, that so far from being episcopal, are thought to be Anabaptists; and chosen with a great deal of

1 See graphic descriptions of the burning of the rumps in Pepys's Diary, February 11, 1660, and in Hudibras; of the King's entry into London, in Clarendon, and in Evelyn. Clarendon, in detailing the particulars of the King's procession, mentions his knighting the Mayor and all the Aldermen of London, an “honor abundantly welcome to their wives." He slily throws out, "The joy was universal; and whosoever was not pleased at heart, took the more care to appear as if he was."