f the Test Acts, and the panic
awakened by the French Revolution threw Parliament into a reactionary
mood, which rendered reform in any direction impossible. The result was
that the question, so far as the House of Commons was concerned, was
shirked from 1790 until 1828, when Lord John Russell took up the
advocacy of a cause in which, nearly forty years earlier, the genius of
Charles James Fox had been unavailingly enlisted.

[Sidenote: THE RIGHTS OF CONSCIENCE]

In moving the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, Lord John
recapitulated their history and advanced cogent arguments on behalf of
the rights of conscience. It could not, he contended, be urged that
these laws were necessary for the security of the Church, for they were
not in force either in Scotland or in Ireland. The number and variety of
offices embraced by the Test Act reduced the measure, so far as its
practical working was concerned, to a palpable absurdity, as
non-commissioned officers, as well as commissioned excisemen,
tide-waiters, and even pedlars, were embraced in its provisions. In
theory, at least, the penalties incurred by these different classes of
men were neither few nor slight--forfeiture of the office,
disqualification for any other under Government, incapacity to maintain
a suit at law, to act as guardian or executor, or to inherit a legacy,
and even liability to a pecuniary penalty of 500_l._! Of course, such
ridiculous penalties were in most cases suspended, but the law which
imposed them still disgraced the statute-book, and was acknowledged by
all unprejudiced persons to be indefensible. Besides, the most Holy
Sacrament of the Christian Church was habitually reduced to a mere civil
form imposed by Act of Parliament upon persons who either derided its
solemn meaning or might be spiritually unfit to receive it. Was it
decent, asked Cowper in his famous 'Expostulation,' thus--

To make the symbols of atoning grace
An office-key, a pick-lock to a place?

To such a question, put in such a form, only one answer was possible.
Under circumstances men took the Communion, declared Lord John, for the
purpose of qualifying for office, and with no other intent, and the
least worthy were the most unscrupulous. 'Such are the consequences of
mixing politics with religion. You embitter and aggravate political
dissensions by the venom of theological disputes, and you profane
religion with the vices of political ambition, making it b