n one of the members for Scotland, who desired the house to
look at the Test and Corporation Acts, as they affected not merely a
minority in England, but even the established religion of a constituent
part of the empire. Scotland had a legal national religion equally with
England; for at the union it was provided by the parliament of England
that no alteration should be made in the principles, doctrine, or
discipline, of the church of England, and the Scotch parliament, true
to their own particular doctrines, immediately issued orders to their
commissioners, that any clause should be null and void which militated
in any way against the principles, doctrines, or discipline of the
Protestant Presbyterian religion. The religion of Scotland was,
therefore, a state religion as well as that of England, yet its members
were affected by these penal laws, and prevented from serving their
king, but at the risk of incurring these penalties, or renouncing their
religion. Why, he asked, this proscription of a whole nation, upon the
notion that this mode of exclusion was the best way of defending
the church and state as by law established? Why deny a community of
privileges to those who confer equal services, and encounter equal
danger? On what occasion had the people of Scotland not contributed
their full share in support of Great Britain? Were they no longer
wanted? Hid the church of England desire to be left to defend the empire
exclusively? If so, let the dissenters be told to withdraw, and quit a
defence which they could only remain to make under exposure to ignominy.
Take the battle of Waterloo, he continued, which had crowned the renown
of the most illustrious leader of their times. What would have been the
fate of that battle, and that leader, if the army which had conquered,
had been filled only by the sons of the church of England? Take from
the field the Scottish regiments; take away too the aid of those sons of
Ireland, the proscribed Catholics: what then would have been the chance
of their arms, divested of the Scottish and Irish soldiers, who filled
their ranks and served their navy in every quarter of the globe! And if
they had the assistance of such men, when the hour of peril came upon
them, they ought not to deny their confidence in a time of tranquillity
and peace. Ministers opposed the motion, the opposition being conducted
by Messrs. Huskisson and Peel. Their chief defence was that the acts in
question led to no pa