alluding to the Test and Corporation
Acts, which had been passed ten years later than the Conventicle Act, in
the same reign of Charles II., and which many of the Non-conformists,
and especially the Unitarians, had urged Lord Liverpool to include in
this measure of repeal, but which he decided on retaining. As has been
said above, he drew a distinction between acts inflicting penalties and
those which went no farther than imposing political disabilities,
feeling that any relief of Protestant Dissenters from such disabilities
must inevitably lead to the concession of a similar indulgence to Roman
Catholics, and not being as yet prepared to admit to Parliament the
members of a Church which recognized the duty of obedience in any matter
to a foreign sovereign; for, as the disabilities had been originally
imposed on the Roman Catholics, so they were now maintained on
political, not religious, grounds; and even those most opposed to a
relaxation of them were careful to explain their resistance to be one
which time and a change of circumstances might mitigate.[173]

As a fitter opportunity for discussing the question will be afforded by
the Duke of Wellington's bill, in 1829, we should not have mentioned it
at all in this place, had not Lord Liverpool, in arranging his
administration, adopted a mode of dealing with it which, though rather a
parliamentary or departmental than a constitutional innovation, was,
nevertheless, one of so strange a character as to seem to call for
examination. Ever since the formation of Walpole's ministry it had been
the invariable rule and practice for all the members of the cabinet to
act in concert on all measures of importance, or, indeed it may be said,
on all measures on which a Parliamentary vote was taken. But, in
arranging his administration after Mr. Perceval's death, Lord Liverpool
found it absolutely impossible to form one satisfactory either to the
nation or to himself if it were to be confined to members in perfect
agreement with himself on the subject of the retention of the
disabilities affecting the Roman Catholics; and therefore, in order to
be able to form a ministry generally strong and respected, he adopted
the strange expedient of allowing every member of it to act
independently on this one question. He made it what was called an open
question. The arrangement, as explained to the House of Commons by Lord
Castlereagh, the ministerial leader of that assembly, was that, "in
sub