Such is the praise bestowed upon Marianus by one of the ablest writers of the age. Making every allowance for the exaggerations of friendship, it may be assumed, that he would not have risked his own credit by speaking in such terms of a man who did not hold a high rank in public estimation. When Sylvius was raised to the papal throne, the Senese selected Marianus to be their ambassador to compliment him on his elevation. The Pope gave him a very cordial and honourable reception, and appointed him Consistorial Advocate. He died on the 30th of September, 1467, and was buried with all the honours due to his distinguished merits. He was the author of numerous works on the Canon and Civil Laws, which were long held in the highest esteem by jurists on the Continent.*

R. S.

CORPORATION AND TEST ACTS.

I know no other definition of persecution than that it is an injury inflicted on a person for his religious principles or profession only. Dr. Furneaux's Letters to Blackstone, 2d ed. p. 164.

THERE is no risk of encountering contradiction when we affirm, that to the eye of enlightened patriotism more encouraging glimpses of a bright æra in legislative reform now present themselves, than have been disclosed through the political gloom of many revolving years, during which our statute book has been crowded with numberless enactments for drawing out and expending the national resources, and has occasionally been blotted with restrictions upon the liberty of the subject, but has rarely been conscious of one solitary regulation for the improvement or reform of the laws relating to our internal economy. The unwearied efforts of a Romilly to simplify and humanize our criminal code, have at length awakened responsive and more successful exertions in the members of administration; and by the judicious consolidation of our Criminal Laws, which has taken place under the auspices of the Secretary for the Home Department, not only has this branch of the law been made accessible to ordinary research, but the necessary collation of heterogeneous crimes and disproportionate punishments has in itself produced many of the amendments which were so desirable. The reform in the law relative to Juries, has evinced a salutary anxiety to place this great barrier of the Constitution in the most impregnable position, and to call into the service of the community, in the important function of jurymen, not a selected few, but all respectable citizens, without distinction of politics or religion. The matured theories of the political economist, also, in spite of the selfish forebodings of many whose interests appeared to be threatened, and in defiance of the more formidable obstacles interposed by an over

he was without opposition elected Pope. The Crusades found in him a warm supporter. Whilst attending one of the expeditions at Ancona, he was seized with a fever, of which he died on the 14th of August, 1464, in the fifty-ninth year of his age. His writings are numerous, some of them very curious, and most of them exceedingly scarce.

* With the exception of some information obtained from manuscript authorities, the materials for the preceding Memoir have been derived from the Life of Faustus Socinus by a Polish Knight; Bock's Historia Antitrinitariorum, Tom. II. pp. 570, &c.; Tiraboschi, Storia della Litteratura Italiana, Tom. VI. Pt. i. art. Mariano Soccini; and from Æneas Sylvius's work above referred to. There is a short life of Marianus in Bayle.

whelming national debt, and a consequent factitious state of the standard of value, have been acted upon to a considerable extent, and will, it may be hoped, continue gradually to break down all narrow monopolies, and to disencumber the fair and honest trader of every vexatious restriction. Nay, even in that department of our laws which regulate the transfer and devolution of property in land, that ark of the lawyer's covenant, a spirit of reform is springing up, which promises to lead to such an enlarged and comprehensive review of the whole of our statute book, as must inevitably at one sweep dispose of a host of obsolete or anomalous enactments which, confessedly antiquated or contradictory in their policy, are still productive sources of litigation, embarrassment and expense. Yet, to have attempted the removal of one of the most indefensible of these obstructions in the system of the body politic, would, not many years ago, have exposed the projector to the imputation of being a wanton disturber of a "system which works well." The wisdom of a periodical revision of the whole body of our laws will be abundantly evident, when it is considered how many idle distinctions and harassing restrictions and disqualifications keep their footing by the mere naked right of possession, and would be expelled with ignominy or contempt by the enlightened renovators of the statute book.

The Conductors of the New Series of the Monthly Repository will honestly endeavour to redeem the pledge which they have tendered to the public, of assisting, to the utmost extent of their influence, every effort for the advancement of the civil as well as the religious interests of mankind; but whilst they will view with complacency, and seek to stimulate and encourage by their approbation, such well-matured reforms in our code as have no obvious connexion with religious freedom, their best energies will be unremittingly devoted to procure the abrogation of such legal enactments as continue to uphold invidious distinctions, upon religious grounds, amongst subjects equally attached to the general principles of the Constitution, and to set at variance the political and religious duties of no inconsiderable or unmeritorious portion of the community.

A generation has passed away since Protestant Dissenters approached the Legislature of their country upon the subject of the degrading stigma attached to their religious profession by those remnants of an intolerant system commonly called the Test and Corporation Acts: and, with few exceptions, silence has passed equally upon the tongues which illustrated their righteous plea with the combined eloquence of the understanding and the heart, and those which repelled it upon cold calculations and sophistical pretences of civil expediency. It may justly be feared, that not only amongst Dissenters themselves, who have not unfrequently taken the places of their fathers without inheriting, on this subject at least, their information and their zeal, but also amongst the ranks of our senators, this interesting question is far from being familiar; and that when again we fight upon this theme," we shall seem to have lost the vantage ground which the perspicuous details of a Beaufoy and the manly energy of a Fox, in combination with other powerful advocates, had acquired for us. This anticipation, however, far from discouraging our zeal, should operate as an additional incentive to prompt and extensive efforts for raising the public mind to its former pitch of knowledge and information; and it may even be hoped that the long interval during which the question has, wisely or otherwise, been permitted to slumber, may enable its advocates to place the weakness and inconsistency of the opposing arguments in a more striking light. And, assuredly, to the unbiassed inquirer, the history of religious exlusion and toleration in the United Kingdom

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and its dependencies, must present a medley of patchwork legislation which cannot be paralleled by any other anomaly of our variegated codes. Were he to derive his impressions from our statute book, apart from the history of the contrariant principles and complex influences which have brought it into its present state, how confused must be every conception which he might attempt to form of the past and existing policy of our Protestant Government towards Nonconformists of different descriptions! And how little of clearness and definiteness would his conceptions acquire by an acquaintance with the past and present state of religious sects, and the practical situation of Dissenters from the Established Church with respect to civil and military employments! The original enactment of the Corporation and Test Acts our inquirer would find to be accounted for, if not completely justified, by political exigencies which have long since passed away, and present at this time as little solid ground for distinction between the members of the community, as would the alleged adherence of their ancestors to the factions of the Red or the White Roses. Nay, he would find that, by a strange fatality, the Protestant Dissenters, who, as a body, are alone entitled to plead an undivided attachment to the principles by which the Throne has been held since the glorious Revolution of 1688, have had the edge of a law turned upon them which was intended to exclude from places of trust a royal faction which threatened the extirpation of both the civil and religious liberties of the country. We do not deny that the Corporation Act was primarily designed to enable the Crown to expel from corporate offices the adherents to the Protector's Government, a precaution which the precarious state of the restored dynasty justified upon the urgent plea of self-preservation; yet, even in this Act, the Sacramental Test was, it seems, an after-thought of the Lords, and assented to by the Commons in the way of compromise with the Upper House, which had liberally proposed to compliment the Crown with the perpetual nomination of the principal officers of every corporation. But when we arrive at the æra of the more general Test Act (25th Charles II.), we shall find that this jealousy of the Presbyterian and other Dissenters was in a great measure confined to the Court, and that they were, in the Lower House especially, confided in as staunch and uncompromising adversaries to the mad designs of the Monarch and his courtiers. What can be a more unequivocal commentary upon the object of this law than a bare statement of the existing exigency? The powers of the executive Government were committed into the hands of the Duke of York and other declared Catholics, and an army, raised without the sanction of Parliament, commanded by a foreigner, and including many Roman Catholic officers, was encamped at Blackheath, and prepared to controul the proceedings of Parliament, if the better genius of Charles had not prompted him to retire from a conflict which would probably have cost him his crown, if not his life. This Parliament, be it remembered, included amongst its members several Protestant Dissenters, who, in the spirit of self-sacrifice, consented to put in jeopardy a part of their most valuable rights, in order to aim a decisive blow at the enemies of the whole. Nor was their support of a measure which seemed necessary to avert the threatened crisis chargeable with any gross want of prudent caution; for in the very same session a Bill for the Toleration of Protestant Dissenters had passed the House of Commons and was entertained by the Lords; a motion for incapacitating them from serving as members of the House had been negatived by a large majority; and whilst the Test Act, with a design not to be mistaken, imposed on the holders of any office, civil or military, or any command or place of trust under his Majesty, the obligation of taking the

Sacrament within three months, it inflicted no such necessity upon the members of either House of Parliament; obviously because, regarded as a temporary measure, the imposition of the Sacramental Test might weaken rather than assist the constitutional party. That the same majority who passed the Test Act and negatived the exclusion of Dissenters from Parliament, did exert themselves to redeem their virtual pledge to relieve them from the important, but less important, disabilities inflicted by that act, by substituting a Test which should distinguish between Protestants and Papists, the parliamentary journals of the next session (1673) satisfactorily evince; and the concluding Act of this. Parliament provided a test which, in excluding Papists, allowed Protestant Dissenters to sit in either House of Parliament; and the further efforts of the House of Commons to repeal the Corporation Act, and of the Upper House to pass "An Act for distinguishing Protestant Dissenters from Popish Recusants," and of both Houses to relieve Dissenters from the Penal Acts of Elizabeth and James the First, were, it seems, only frustrated by the sudden prorogation of Parliament, or, indeed, in the latter case, by a less dignified expedient on the part of the Crown, whose enmity to them was exaggerated by their determined opposition to its arbitrary designs. What friend of the Established Church, capable of rising above a selfish attachment to exclusion for its own sake, (which is the very essence of persecution,) can see, in the circumstances at which we have glanced, the symptoms of a deliberate intention to exclude Protestant Dissenters from civil offices and trusts ? Who can avoid the conclusion, that the Test laws must have been repealed as against them, but for the political manoeuvring of an anti-protestant Court?

Passing over the short-lived tyranny of James the Second, to whom all laws were equally cobwebs, we are at first sight surprised to find that the jealousy of Protestant Dissenters, which had in the latter years of Charles's reign distinguished the Court party, was now transferred to the other branches of the Legislature, but more prominently to the House of Lords, whose instinctive aversion to the former suppressors of their privileges had been suspended, but not destroyed, by their dread of Popery.

"I hope you will leave room for the admission of all Protestants that are able and willing to serve," was the unprompted and enlightened recommendation of King William to his first Parliament; but the House of Lords had exhausted its stock of toleration; and in spite of the King's wishes, and of the animated reasonings of many noble Lords who have handed them down in the shape of protests, the Sacramental Test was retained as to civil and military offices. This triumph of the High-Church party in the Upper House soon extended its influence to the Commons, where a bill to repeal the Corporation Act was dropped by the liberal Court party, on finding that their numbers were nearly equally balanced by the Opposition, and that, if carried through the House, it would fail to conciliate the support of the Lords spiritual and temporal. Unfortunately for the Dissenters, the reign of this enlightened Prince presents an almost uninterrupted series of misunderstandings with the leading parties in Parliament, and, independently of the increase of High-Church principles, it is to be feared that the known attachment of the Monarch to measures of comprehension, increased the zeal and animated the efforts of the Tory party to thwart him in this as well as other designs for the prosperity of the empire. Here we find that the Test Act, which originated upon an emergency unconnected with any apprehension of Protestant Dissenters, and was retained against them, through the machinations of the faithless Charles, upon a change in the order of things, found effective sup

port only in the Upper House, the other branches of the Legislature being favourable to its repeal. Can a measure so introduced, and so retained, be deliberately ranked amongst the fundamental laws of the State, or the essential barriers of the State religion? It might, however, still be urged, that experience had proved the laws under consideration to be wise and salutary, and that the question is, not how these beneficial enactments took their rise, or by what series of fortuitous circumstances they have stood their ground; but whether they are not now interwoven into the spirit and practice of our Constitution, so as to render their repeal an innovation pregnant with danger? Upon this ground, historical facts enable us confidently to meet the advocates of the Sacramental Test.

1. The practice of occasional Conformity, has, in a great measure, defeated the Test laws, so far as the design to exclude Protestant Dissenters from civil and military offices can be fairly imputed to them. We are not about to defend the practice, though it originated not in secular motives, but in the wish to avoid the scandal of an open schism, and was not unnaturally continued under the plausible plea that it amounted to no more than making the declaration against Popery prescribed to Members of Parliament. The reiterated attempts to pass an Act against occasional Conformity in the reign of Queen Anne, and their final success by means of a political juggle between Lord Nottingham and the Whigs, are well known; as is the repeal of the Act five years after the accession of the House of Hanover, to which repeal the occasional Conformist refers, as justifying by implication the practice which the abrogated statute was intended to repress.

2. Such were the inconveniences and risks to which even the conscientious Churchman was exposed by the Corporation Act, that an Act was passed in the 5th year of George the First, by which not only the existing members of corporations were quieted in their offices, notwithstanding past omissions tɔ take the Sacrament, but all future incapacities on that account were done away, unless the party were removed from his office, or prosecuted for his neglect, within six months after his election. Under the protection of this statute, it is well known that many Dissenters, who would disdain occasional Conformity, retain offices in corporations without fear of molestation; and that in some corporations they are the predominant party. Yet, it is clear that the election of any such Dissenter may be rendered null by giving notice of his previous neglect to qualify, or by a quo warranto Information granted within the six months; and that in many a petty corporation, from whose influence, either against or in favour of the Established Church, it would be preposterous to expect any perceptible result, the most enlightened and public-spirited inhabitants, if Dissenters, are unwilling to encounter the ordeal of an election, where their civil incapacity might be exposed, and their useful ambition defeated, by the most vulgar brawler for the safety of the Church. 3. In what precise views and feelings towards Protestant Nonconformists the practice originated, of passing Bills of Indemnity against penalties incurred by neglect to take the Test, it is not easy to discover. The language of these acts has confessedly fallen short of the case of intentional and conscientious omission, for they constantly refer to ignorance of the law, absence or unavoidable accident, as the grounds of indemnity. Yet, it is not improbable that indirect relief to the Dissenters was contemplated by many who supported these bills, from time to time, in the reign of George II., but who had not sufficient political firmness to appear as the open advocates of religious liberty. For more than half a century, the Indemnity Act has passed without exciting discussion; and curious would be the reception of that