Their civil disabilities. Early attempts at relief. Repeal of Corporation as well as the provisions against them in the Act of 9 & 10 1 Cowper, Works, i. 8o. 2 Lord Mahon, Hist. of Eng. i. 488, ii. 280. Catholic 1829. The following year, 1829, witnessed the passing of the Roman Roman Catholic Relief Act. From the date of the Union with Ireland in 1801, the injustice of maintaining the poli- tion Act, tical disabilities of the Roman Catholics in a United Kingdom of which they formed no inconsiderable a portion of the population, became more and more glaring. But George III. declared that he 'should reckon any man his personal enemy,' who proposed any measure of relief; and during the life of that King the liberal concessions with which Pitt had been anxious to inaugurate the Union,— and the refusal of which was signalised by his resignation of office,-were compulsorily postponed. Under George IV. the question, which was annually contested in Parliament, assumed a graver aspect. The Catholic Association,' formed by Daniel O'Connell, kept up a constant appeal to the excited passions of the Irish people, and at length the Tory Ministry of the Duke of Wellington, finding it necessary to choose between concession and civil war, introduced, and with the aid of the Whigs, carried through both Houses, the Emancipation Act of 1829. This measure, to which George IV. was with difficulty induced to give a reluctant and hesitating assent, was tardy indeed, but complete. It admitted Roman Catholics, on taking the oath of allegiance with a repudiation of the doctrine that princes excommunicated by the Pope might be deposed or murdered (instead of the oath of supremacy and declaration against transubstantiation and the invocation of saints), to both Houses of Parliament, to all corporate offices, to all judicial offices (except in the ecclesiastical courts), and to all civil and political offices, except those of Regent, Lord Chancellor in England and Ireland,1 and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Additional restraints were, however, imposed by the Act upon the interference of Roman Catholics in Church patronage: Jesuits and monks were prohibited from coming into the realm without licence; The Irish Chancellorship has since been thrown open to all persons irrespective of their religious belief. Repeal of penalties and provisions were inserted for regulating the residence of such as were already within the kingdom. 1 In 1832 an Act was passed providing that Roman affecting Ro- Catholics in respect of their schools, places of worship, man Catho- and charities, and of property held therewith, and of perlic religion and educa- sons employed about them, should be subject to the same tion. Completion of civil enfranchisement of Dissenters. Jewish disabilities. laws as were applicable to Protestant Dissenters. A few years later the policy of according perfect religious liberty. to the Roman Catholics was consummated by the repeal of almost all the enactments against them which (though for the most part obsolete) still remained on the statute book.3 A few supplementary measures were still required to complete the civil enfranchisement of Dissenters. In 1833, Mr. Pease, the first Quaker who had been elected to the House of Commons for one hundred and forty years, was allowed to take his seat on making an affirmation instead of an oath. In the same year Quakers, Moravians, and Separatists, were enabled by statute to substitute an affirmation, in all cases, for an oath.* The Jews, banished from England under Edward I., had been suffered to return by Cromwell, but were not formally authorised to settle in England until after the Restoration." An Act of James I., passed in 1610, and directed against the Roman Catholics, had the collateral effect of debarring the Jews from the benefits of naturalization, by making the reception of the sacrament a necessary preliminary to naturalization in all cases. In the interest of trade and colonization, this requirement was partially relaxed by two subsequent statutes, which (1663) dispensed with the sacramental test in favour of all foreigners who had been engaged in the hemp and flax manufacture, and (1739) of all Jews and Protestant foreigners who 1 10 Geo. IV. c. 7. 2 2 & Will. IV. c. 115. 3 7 & 8 Vict. c. 102, 9 & 10 Vict. c. 59. 4 3 & Will. IV. cc. 49, 82; and see 1 & 2 Vict. c. 77. 5 Blunt, Hist. of the Jews in England, p. 72. • Supra, p. 668, n. had resided seven years continuously in the American plantations. Notwithstanding the political disabilities attaching to them in England, the number of foreign. Jewish settlers continued to increase with the expansion of English commerce; and at length, in 1753, an attempt was made to extend to all Jews applying for Parliamentary naturalization the exemption from the sacramental test, already conceded to those who had resided in the colonies, or been engaged in the manufacture of hemp or flax. But the celebrated Jew Bill, by which this very moderate measure of toleration was effected, proved to be in advance of the opinion of the age. 'No Jews! No Jews! No Wooden Shoes!' became the popular cry; and although the Bill, after a fierce opposition in the House of Commons, obtained a fleeting place upon the Statute-book, it raised such a storm of opposition throughout the country, as to necessitate its repeal in the following session.3 Jews were occasionally admitted to municipal offices, together with Protestant Nonconformists, under cover of the Annual Indemnity Acts; but the declaration 'on the true faith of a Christian,' imposed by the Act 9 Geo. IV. c. 17, while relieving Dissenters from the requirements of the Test and Corporation Acts, had forged new fetters for the Jew. These were removed, so far as regards corporations, in 1845; and after a lengthened struggle, the only legal obstacle to the admission of Jews to Parliament was also of Jews to removed, in 1858, by an Act which empowered either Parliament, House of Parliament, by resolution, to omit the words 'upon 1858. the true faith of a Christian' from the oath of abjuration.5 Admission Civil Regis In 1836 a civil registration of births, marriages, and tration of deaths was established; and by another Act, Dissenters births, marriages, and were permitted to solemnize marriages in their own chapels, deaths, 1 15 Car. II. and 13 Geo. II. c. 7; Cobbett's Parl. Hist. xiv. 1373; Lecky, Hist. of Eng. i. 262. 2 Supra, p. 668, n. 3 Lord Mahon, Hist. of Eng. iv. 35-37. 48 & 9 Vict. c. 52. 21 & 22 Vict. c. 49; 23 & 24 Vict. c. 63. By the 29 & 30 Vict. c. 19, all distinctions between Jewish and other members were removed by the enactment of a new form of oath from which the words 'on the true faith of a Christian' were omitted. 1836. Bill, 1836. registered for that purpose. The grievance complained of Dissenters' by Dissenters with regard to burials (though destined, Marriage doubtless, soon to disappear) still continues in the country districts of England, mitigated, however, by the practice of some incumbents who allow Dissenting ministers to perform their own burial service in the parish churchyard; and in populous towns the Dissenters have generally provided themselves with separate burying grounds and Universities unconsecrated parts of cemeteries. Lastly, in 1871, one Tests Act, of the few remaining disabilities of Dissenters was re 1871. dressed by the Universities Tests Act, which opened all lay academical degrees and all lay academical and collegiate offices in the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham to persons of any religious belief. V. Liberty of the Press. (V.) Liberty Of the political privileges of the people acquired or of the Press. enlarged since the Revolution, we have still to consider the liberty of the Press,-'the guardian and guide of all other liberties,' —and the last to be recognized by the State. 2 We have seen how freedom of opinion in religious. matters was early restrained by the action of the Church against the Lollard teachers and writers; and soon after the invention of printing in the fifteenth century the press was placed under a rigorous censorship, not only in The Censor- England but throughout Europe. After the Reformaship. tion in England, the censorship of the press passed with the ecclesiastical supremacy to the Crown. It became a part of the royal prerogative to appoint a Licenser without whose imprimatur no writings could be lawfully published; and the printing of unlicensed works was visited with the severest punishments. Printing was further restrained by patents and monopolies. The privilege was confined, in 1 6 & 7 Will. IV. cc. 85, 86. 2 Earl Russell, Eng. Con. p. 339. Supra, p. 408, 411. |