By § 14, No person can be admitted to any ecclesiastical promotion, nor shall presume to consecrate or administer the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, without episcopal ordination, under pain of forfeiting one hundred pounds for every such offence.

Any lecturer, (§ 19. 21.) preaching a sermon or lecture, without having been licensed by the bishop of the diocese or the archbishop of the province, or without having read the thirty-nine articles and declared his unfeigned assent to the same, or without reading the Common Prayer and the service of the Church of England on one Sunday in every month while he holds the lectureship, is disabled from ever preaching again till he should conform, and is liable to three months imprisonment without bail or mainprize for every lecture or sermon he may preach, while so disabled.

§ 24. By the same Act of Parliament "the several good laws and statutes of this realm," formerly made and then in force "for the uniformity of prayer and administration of the public sacraments," were declared to stand in full force and strength, and were applied to the form of Common Prayer, according to the alterations which it had then recently undergone,

By the Five Mile Act (17 Car. 2. c. 2.) "All parsons, vicars, curates, lecturers, and other persons in Holy Orders, or pretended Holy Orders, or pretending to Holy Orders," who had not then

1

complied with the conditions of the Act of Uniformity, and who should not take the oath of non-resistance, and all such persons as shall take upon them to preach in any unlawful assembly, conventicle, or meeting, under color or pretence of any exercise of religion, contrary to law, shall not, (except in passing on the road) come or be within five miles of any city, town corporate, or borough sending members to Parliament, on pain of forfeiting £40 for every such offence.

§ 4. Every person so restrained, and not frequenting divine service according to the Church of England, is also disabled under the same penalty, from teaching any public or private school, or taking any boarder instructed by himself or herself.

The third clause of the Conventicle Act, which particularly applies to the case of Dissenting Ministers, imposes a penalty of £20 for the first offence, and of £40 for every subsequent offence, upon any person who shall take upon him to preach or teach in any meeting, assembly, or conventicle, under color or pretence of any exercise of religion, in other manner than according to the Liturgy and practice of the Church of England.

Such were the leading provisions of the law with respect to Protestant Dissenters, as it existed at the time of the Revolution in 1688, and as it exists at this day. None of these statutes are repealed, except in some few particulars of

very subordinate importance: and, though during many years past, a general indisposition to enforce them appears to have prevailed; it should bé remembered that every individual magistrate in England and Wales is not only authorised, but required to carry them into effect, in all cases to which they are applicable, on being informed of the offences at which they are pointed, and that a considerable portion of the penalty incurred, may at the discretion of such magistrate, be given as a reward to the informer. It has been sufficiently demonstrated that the temper of the times may change: the severe, though dormant enactments of the laws in question were well compared by a reverend Prelate to scattered weapons lying loose upon the ground, which the fiend of persecution may at any time catch up and employ to a deadly purpose. That they are still susceptible of being so employed, is apparent from the decision of the Court of King's Bench, in Peak's case, (2 Salk. 572); from the case of the king against Samuel Hall, 1st Term Rep. 320, where the defendant was convicted in the penalty of £20 for permitting an assembly of Dissenters to exercise their religious worship in his dwelling house; and when his conviction was removed by certiorari, the Court of King's Bench said, that however inclined they were to listen to any trivial objections to such a prosecution, yet none of the objections actually taken were suffi

* Bishop Horseley, in Woodfall's Register, June 10, 1789.

cient in point of law, and therefore the conviction was affirmed.

But notwithstanding these examples, the penal laws against nonconformists have so long been practically obsolete, that they had fallen into complete oblivion, and their very continuance was generally a subject of doubt. It is therefore, proper to state, that in Flintshire, several penalties, have within these few months, been imposed and levied under the Conventicle Act, on persons who by exercising acts of religion in Dissenting congregations, violated, without knowing that they were subject to, its provisions. The case of William Kent is of the same kind. Having been convicted of teaching, by a single magistrate, he appealed to the Quarter Sessions held in Berkshire, in January, 1811; and the form of trying his appeal seems to have been somewhat unusual. A jury was impannelled to try the fact, and he was found guilty. But a certiorari was afterwards obtained for removing the conviction into the Court of King's Bench, where it was quashed without opposition, in consequence of certain defects in point of form, which were found to be indefensible and irremediable.---A case which was tried at Portsmouth Sessions last summer, between two per sons of the names of Norris and Maybee, but which was in fact a prosecution by the clergyman of the parish, against the Hon. George Grey, Commissioner of the Dock-yard, for instituting a Sunday School for the instruction of the apprentices

and young workmen in the Dock-yard, may also be quoted, to prove both that these laws are still in existence, and that there still are individuals well inclined to enforce them.

But these laws, though still unrepealed, certainly underwent very important modifications from the Toleration Act; and indeed, under the construction which that Act for a whole century, invariably received, they could only be applicable to a very small number of persons. The historians of that period, relate that King William was desirous of affording to the Dissenters a more enlarged and comprehensive indulgence; but the measure brought into Parliament for that purpose, though supported by the influence of the Court, was rejected by the House of Lords, where it originated. The Act of Toleration, however, effected a great deal, and has always been attributed to the pen of Lord Somers. Bishop Burnet says it passed easily, which is rendered also probable by the scantiness of the debates which it occasioned. He gives the following short account of its provisions. "It excused dissenters from all penalties, for their not coming to Church, and for going to their separate meetings. There was an exception of Socinians; but a provision was put in it in favor of Quakers: and though the rest were required to take the oaths to the government, they were excused upon making in lieu

*This is a slight mistake; the oaths were required to be taken as well as the declaration made, by all but Quakers,