alterations would be made in the laws as would leave room for the admission of all his protestant subjects who were willing to serve him. But it was well known, that during that reign the strongest party in parliament was not the party of the court. They resented the advancement of William to the throne; they resolved to disturb his enjoyment of a possession from which they could not exclude him, and opposed with violence the measures he was known to patronize. Some men however there were, and of the foremost rank for greatness of character, even in that extraordinary æra, who supported with unanswerable reasons the sentiments of their sovereign, as appeared from a protest of the lords upon this subject in the year 1688. Upon another occasion of a still later date, a conference between the two houses upon the bill of occasional conformity, the peers-not a few individuals of that assembly, but the whole house,-expressed in language still more emphatical, their abhorrence of the injustice of the test act.

Mr. Beaufoy proceeded to enquire, whether the public good, either political or religious, rendered it necessary, that the dissenters should be excluded from the service of the state. To show how very unnecessary was this exclusion, it was sufficient in his own opinion to remark, that to the higher trust of legislative authority the dissenters were admitted without hesitation or reserve. From the members of that house, from the members of the house of peers, no religious test was required. Was then the taking the sacrament unnecessary in the legislators of the kingdom, and could it be requisite in a tide-waiter or an exciseman? He had heard of an idle opinion, that there was something of a republican tendency, of an antimonarchical bias, in the very doctrines of the presbyterian church. From so vague an assertion he appealed to experience. Were the Scots suspected of an indifference to monarchy? He had heard them taxed with a predilection for those maxims of policy which were the most favourable to power;

but of levelling principles, of republican attachments, he had never heard them accused. The English dissenters since the revolution, which had first given this country a constitution, had uniformly acted on principles the most beneficial, and had constantly proved themselves the ardent supporters and the faithful adherents of that system of monarchy which was established by

law.

Would then the repeal of the test act prove injurious to the established church? That church, it was said, ought by all means to be supported; and God forbid that it should be destroyed, or that he should advise a measure injurious to its safety. If the aim of the dissenters had been to attack the rights of others, and not to recover their own, they would not have chosen a member of the church of England for their advocate, nor would he have accepted such a trust. The suggested repeal was not the commencement of a new plan, but the completion of that wise system of toleration, which in part had long since been adopted. The establishment of the church of England consisted in her tithes, her prebends, her deaneries, and her bishoprics. These constituted her establishment before the test act had an existence; and they would equally constitute it if it were repealed. In Scotland, no such law ever had a being; and had Scotland no established church? In Ireland, the relief which was now solicited for the Protestant dissenters, was granted seven years ago; and was the church of Ireland destroyed? In Holland, in Russia, in Prussia, in Hanover, no traces of such a test were to be found. In the dominions of the emperor, all civil disqualifications on account of religious opinions were abolished. In France, a similar relief was granted by the edict of Nantes, and that edict, it was reported, was about to be revived. Mr. Beaufoy added, that the repeal of the test act, so far from being pernicious to the established church, would be salutary. The different classes of dissenters had no general interest, no bond of

union, but that reproachful exclusion from public employments which was common to them all.

If he were asked, If you abolish the test of the sacrament, what new test will you establish in its room? His answer was, that of the abjuration oath, and of the declaration, which condemned an essential part of the Romish creed. The first could not be taken by the deist, the Jew, or the professor of any religion but the Christian; the last could not be taken by the catholic. If he were farther asked, If justice be the principle upon which you decide, shall not the catholics enjoy those common privileges of citizenship, which you describe as the unquestionable right of all? He would answer without hesitation, If the catholics could prove, that though they were of the church of Rome, they were not of the court of Rome; if they could give a sufficient pledge of loyalty to the sovereign and attachment to the laws; in questions which they were not now called upon to decide, and which therefore he did not mean to discuss, he should think they ought to be admitted to the civil and military service of the state. Mr. Beaufoy strengthened his argument by an allusion to the situation and charac ter of Mr. Howard. He, upon whom every kingdom in Europe, England excepted, would gladly confer, at least the common privileges of a citizen, and whom the proudest nation might be happy to call her own, was incapable of legal admission into any office in this country. The consequence was, that, his public spirit having led him a few years since to brave the penalties of the law, and to serve in a troublesome and expensive civil employment, the denunciations of the test act were still hanging over him; and Mr. Beaufoy feared that even now, on his return to his native country, amidst the plaudits of an admiring world, it was in the power of any desperate informer, who was willing to take that road to wealth and damnation which the legislature had pointed out and recommended to his choice, to prosecute him to conviction, and to bring upon him those VOL. II. 47

dreadful penalties, which constituted the punishment of

an outlaw.

Mr. Beaufoy proceeded to observe, that there were two other bodies of men, who were injured by those provisions of the law, of which he proposed the repeal. The first of these was .composed of all the adherents of the established church of Scotland. By the test and corporation acts, no native of Scotland who was of the established church in that country, could be admitted to any office in England, or could be employed in the army or the navy in any part of Great Britain, unless he would publicly profess a religion different from his own. Englishmen residing in Scotland were entitled to all the privileges of Scots, and had possessed, without this disgraceful stipulation, the highest offices in that country. Why then should the naval or military service of the united kingdoms be fettered with English restraints? Or why should English conditions be annexed to the possession of a British office? He had heard it said, from a confusion of ideas that was scarcely credi ble, that to grant a remission in favour of Scotland of the test and corporation acts, would be a breach of the union an opinion, which supposed that, because by the articles of the union nothing could be taken from Scotland but what was then stipulated, therefore nothing could be given. He had proved, that the government and discipline of the church of England derived no additional security from these acts, whereas the act which related to the patronage of the church of Scotland, affected its discipline; and yet had not been considered as any breach of the articles of union. The same may be said of the subsequent act, which gave a complete toleration to episcopal dissenters in that country.

Another body of men who were aggrieved by the laws in question, were the conscientious ministers of the church of England. By the duties of their function, by the positive precepts of their religion, they were enjoined, to warn from the sacred table all blasphemers of

God, all slanderers of his word, and persons of a profligate life; yet to those very persons, if they demanded it as a qualification, they were compelled by the test act to administer the sacrament. If there were any thing serious in religion; if the doctrines of the church of England were not a mere mockery of the human understanding; if to talk of peace of mind here and of eternal consequences hereafter, were not the idle babbling of a weak and childish superstition; then must it necessarily follow, that no pretexts of state policy could justify this enormous profanation, this monstrous attempt, as ir rational as it was impious, to strengthen the church of England by the debasement of the church of Christ. Mr. Beaufoy would have thought it not unbecoming the bishops, to have solicited the removal of this scandal from the church. But let the requisition come from what quarter it might, sure he was, that a compliance with it belonged to that house as a duty for whatever tended to the debasement of religion, diminished political authority, and weakened the sanctions of civil discipline.

MR, SHERIDAN.

On India Affairs.

He began with animadverting upon some incidental circumstances which had recently occurred. He particularly dwelt with great indignation upon what he styled, the low and artful stratagem, which had just been practised, of delivering to the members and others, in this last period of parliamentary enquiry, a printed paper, bearing the signature of Warren Hastings, and which he was to consider as a second defence against the charge