must only try to get ourselves back
into the framework and the spirit of an age when a sound patriot and a
high-minded ecclesiastic could be willing to postpone indefinitely an
act of justice to a whole section of the community in order to avoid
the risk of having the Sovereign brought into disadvantageous
comparison with the Sovereign's eldest son. Walpole approved of the
Test Act no more than Hoadley did, although the spirit of his objection
to it was far less positive and less exalted than that of Hoadley. But
Walpole was, of course, an avowed Opportunist; he never professed or
pretended to be anything better. There is nothing surprising in the
fact that he regarded an act of justice to the Dissenters as merely a
matter of public convenience, to be performed when it could be
performed without disturbing anybody of {112} importance. Hoadley must
have looked at the subject from an entirely different point of view; it
must have been to him a question of justice or injustice; yet he, too,
was quite ready to put it off indefinitely rather than allow it to be
made the means of obtaining a certain amount of popular favor for the
Prince of Wales as opposed to his father the King. We shall see such
things occurring again and again in the course of this history. The
agreement of Walpole and Hoadley did, indeed, put off the repeal of the
Test Act for a pretty long time. The brand and stigma on the
Protestant Dissenters as well as on the Roman Catholics was allowed to
remain in existence for nearly another century of English history. We
are now in 1737, and the Test Act was not repealed until 1828.
Historians are sometimes reproached for paying too much attention to
palace squabbles; yet a palace squabble becomes a matter of some
importance if it can postpone an act of national justice for by far the
greater part of a century.

[Sidenote: 1737--A question of price]

There was a good deal of talk about this time of the possibility of
adopting some arrangement for the separation of Hanover from the
English Crown. The fact of the Princess of Wales having given birth to
a daughter and not a son naturally led to a revival of this question.
The electorate of Hanover could not descend to a woman, and if the
Prince of Wales should have no son some new arrangement would have to
be made. The Queen was very anxious that Hanover should be secured for
her second son, to whom she was much attached, and the King was
understood to