once proceeded to bring other actions, and on the issue whether the printers were justified by the privilege and order of the House, the Court of Queen's Bench unanimously decided against them. The sheriffs levied the amount of damages, and the House vindicated its privileges by committing Stockdale and his attorney Howard, and also the sheriffs. While in prison Stockdale repeated his offence by bringing other actions, for which his attorney's son and clerk were committed; and the deadlock was at length only removed by the passing of an Act of Par- Right of liament providing that all such actions should be stayed to publish on the production of a certificate or affidavit that the paper established complained of had been published by the order of either 4 Vict. c. 9. House of Parliament. The right of a newspaper to publish a fair and faithful report of the debates and proceedings in Parliament without any authorization from either House, was determined in 1868 by the decision of the Court of Queen's Bench, in Iason v. Walter, that no ac- Wason v. Walter, tion for libel would lie against the proprietor of the 'Times' 1868. for so doing.

IV. Growth of Religious Liberty.

Parliament

by Act 3 &

ration and growth of

Protestant Nonconformity, fostered instead of being (IV.) Tolecrushed by the very efforts of the Church to enforce unity, had gained considerably in numbers, organization, and Religious Liberty. political weight, during the reigns of the last two Stewarts; and the important services of the Dissenters in combining with the Church to bring about the Revolution of 1688, were rewarded by the Toleration Act. This famous Toleration Act, 1 Will. statute was far indeed from granting religious freedom; it and Mar. c.

1 Stockdale v. Hansard, 9 Ad. & E. 1 (1839).

Case of the Sheriff of Middlesex, 11 Ad. & E. 273 (1840); Broom, Const. Law, 960.

3 3 & 4 Vict. c. 9. Subsequently Stockdale's attorney, Howard, brought two actions against the officers of the House, which, on the grounds of excess of authority and informality in the Speaker's warrant, were given in the plaintiff's favour. But on a writ of error the judgment in the second action was reversed by the Court of Exchequer Chamber. Howard v. Gosset, 10 Q.B. 359; Broom. Const. Law, 969.

Wason v. Walter, 8 Best & Smith, 671.

18.

Toleration only partially estab lished.

repealed none of the Acts by which conformity with the Church of England was exacted, and left the civil disabilities of nonconformists under the Corporation Act of 1661 and the Test Act of 16731 intact; but it recognized, for the first time, the right of public worship beyond the pale of the State Church, by exempting from the penalties of existing statutes against separate conventicles and absence. from church, all persons who should take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and subscribe a declaration against transubstantiation. Dissenting ministers were relieved from the restrictions imposed by the Act of Uniformity and the Conventicle Act upon the administration of the sacrament and preaching in meetings, on condition that, in addition to taking the oaths, they signed the 39 Articles, with the exception of three and part of a fourth Quakers were allowed to make an affirmation in lieu of taking the oaths. All meeting-houses were required to be registered, but when registered their congregations were protected from molestation.

6

The principle of religious toleration was as yet, however, but imperfectly established. Roman Catholics and Unitarians were specially excepted from the Act, and were soon afterwards subjected to additional penalties. Unitarians were disabled from holding any office ecclesiastical, civil or military and Roman Catholics were placed under most severe restrictions. In 1700 an Act was passed offering a reward of £100 for the discovery of any Roman Catholic priest exercising the functions of his office, and subjecting him to perpetual imprisonment. By the same Act every Roman Catholic was declared incapable of inheriting or purchasing land, unless he abjured his religion upon oath, and on his refusal, his property was vested, during his life, in

1 Supra, p. 629.

2 Supra, pp. 632-634.

3 The articles excepted (as expressing the distinctive doctrines of the Church) were Nos. 34, 35, 36, and part of No. 20.

+ 1 Will. & Mar. c. 18, confirmed by 10 Anne, c. 2.

5 9 Will. III. c. 35.

6

I Will. & Mar. st. 2, c. I.

under Anne.

his next of kin, being a Protestant. He was also prohibited from sending his children abroad to be educated.1 During the Tory ascendency of the last four years of Temporary Queen Anne's reign, serious inroads were made upon the reaction toleration formerly granted to Protestant Nonconformists, Acts against more especially by two statutes, the Occasional Conformity occasional conformity Act, and the Schism Act. The former, passed in 1711, and the growth of was intended to prevent the evasion of the Test Act by schism, 1711 occasional conformity on the part of those Dissenters who, and 1713. while adhering to their own form of worship, did not hesitate occasionally to receive the sacrament according to the rites of the Established Church. The other Act, passed in 1713, for preventing the growth of Schism,' was framed in the true persecuting spirit to deprive Dissenters of the means of educating their children in their own religious beliefs, by crushing all nonconformist schools, some of which had already attained a certain degree of eminence. These reactionary statutes were, however, both repealed in 1718, under George I.,+ and from the beginning of the reign of George II. civil offices were practically thrown open to Protestant Dissenters, by means of the Annual Indemnity Annual Indemnity Acts passed in favour of those who had failed to qualify Acts under themselves under the Corporation and Test Acts. The George II. severe laws against the Roman Catholics, although enforced by a proclamation of Queen Anne in 1711, by a further Act of Parliament after the Rebellion of 1715,6 and by another royal proclamation after the rebellion of 1745, were also greatly mitigated in practice.

10 Anne, c. 2.

3

12 Anne, c. 7.

4 5 Geo. I. c. 4. In 1697, Sir Humphrey Edwin, Lord Mayor of London, and a Presbyterian, gave great offence to churchmen by going in civic state to a Dissenting Meeting-house. To prevent any repetition of the scandal, the Act of 5 Geo. I. (now repealed by the Statute Law Revision Act 1871) while repealing the Occasional Conformity Act, enacted that no mayor, bailiff, or other magistrate should attend any public meeting for religious worship, other than that of the Church of England, in the gown or with the ensigns of his office, on pain of being disqualified to bear any public office whatsoever.

The first Indemnity Act was passed in 1727. Since then, with a few exceptions, similar Acts were annually passed, until the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in 1828. 61 Geo. I. c. 55.

Lord Hard

In 1753, a fresh restriction was imposed upon Dissenters wicke's Mar- by Lord Hardwicke's Marriage Act, the immediate object

riage Act,

1753

Relaxation

ligious code

under George III.

upheld by House of Lords in the case of the City of

London and

of which was to prevent clandestine marriages. Dissenters had previously been allowed to be married in their own places of worship; but by this Act all marriages, except those of Jews and Quakers, were required to be solemnized in a church, by ministers of the Establishment and according to its ritual.

It was not, indeed, till the reign of George III., when of penal re- the Jacobitism of the Roman Catholics had become lukewarm and innocuous, and the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield had stimulated and revived the dissenting sects, that the gradual relaxation of the penal religious code was Principle of commenced in earnest. Early in this reign the broad prinToleration ciples of toleration were judicially affirmed by the House of Lords, in the case of the City of London and the Dissenters. 'It is now no crime,' said Lord Mansfield in moving the judgment of the House, 'for a man to say the Dissen- he is a Dissenter; nor is it any crime for him not to take ters, 1767. the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England; nay, the crime is, if he does it contrary to the dictates of his conscience.' 'Persecution for a sincere, though erroneous, conscience, is not to be deduced from reason or the fitness of things; it can only stand upon positive law. The Toleration Act renders that which was illegal before, now legal; the Dissenters' way of worship is permitted and allowed by this Act; it is not only exempted from punishment, but rendered innocent and lawful; it is established: it is put under the protection, and is not merely under the connivance, of the law.' There is nothing certainly,' he added, 'more unreasonable, more inconsistent with the rights of human nature,

126 Geo. II. c. 33.

Chamberlain of London v. Allen Evans, Esq. The suit, originally instituted in the Sheriff's Court, was for a fine (under a bye-law made in 1748) for refusing to serve as sheriff, on the ground of disability arising from not having taken the Sacrament, according to the rites of the Church of England, within a year before, as required by the Corporation Act of 13 Car. II. Judgment of the House for the Defendant.

more contrary to the spirit and precepts of the Christian religion, more iniquitous and unjust, more impolitic, than persecution. It is against natural religion, revealed religion, and sound policy."1

Catholic

Despite the repugnance and opposition to Catholic emancipation of George III., the ignorant bigotry of the masses which culminated in the Gordon riots of 1780, and the generally unsettled temper of Parliament and the country as to the doctrines of religious liberty, the penal Roman code, as regards both Roman Catholics and Protestant Relief Acts of 1778 and Dissenters, was gradually, though unsystematically, re- 1791. laxed. By the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1778, the precursor of the 'No Popery' Riots under Lord George Gordon in 1780,-supplemented by another Act in 1791,2 various penalties and disabilities were removed. Priests were no longer subjected to perpetual imprisonment for the performance of their sacred functions; Roman Catholic heirs educated abroad were relieved from forfeiture of their estates to the next Protestant heir; the prohibition to purchase landed property was removed; a modified freedom of worship and education was permitted; and Roman Catholic Peers, though still barred by the oath of supremacy from sitting in the House of Lords, were relieved from the banishment from the King's presence to which they had been subjected in 1678.3

ligious dis

In 1779, the Dissenting Ministers' Act, relieved Protes- Statutes relieving tant dissenting preachers and schoolmasters from the Dissenters limited subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles required from reby the Toleration Act; and a further measure in 18125 abilities. relieved them from the remaining oaths and declaration required by the latter statute. The following year witnessed the removal of the disabilities under which Unitarians had laboured, by a statute' repealing the exception of anti-Trinitarians from the benefits of the Toleration Act,