But the Tory reaction was only temporary.  During the eighteenth century a relatively tolerant spirit prevailed among the Christian sects and new sects were founded.  The official Church became less fanatical; many of its leading divines were influenced by rationalistic thought.  If it had not been for the opposition of King George III, the Catholics might have been freed from their disabilities before the end of the century.  This measure, eloquently advocated by Burke and desired by Pitt, was not carried till 1829, and then under the threat of a revolution in Ireland.  In the meantime legal toleration had been extended to the Unitarians in 1813, but they were not relieved from all disabilities till the forties.  Jews were not admitted to the full rights of citizenship till 1858.

The achievement of religious liberty in England in the nineteenth century has been mainly the work of Liberals.  The Liberal

[106] party has been moving towards the ultimate goal of complete secularization and the separation of the Church from the State—­ the logical results of Locke’s theory of civil government.  The Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland in 1869 partly realized this ideal, and now more than forty years later the Liberal party is seeking to apply the principle to Wales.  It is highly characteristic of English politics and English psychology that the change should be carried out in this piecemeal fashion.  In the other countries of the British Empire the system of Separation prevails; there is no connection between the State and any sect; no Church is anything more than a voluntary society.  But secularization has advanced under the State Church system.  It is enough to mention the Education Act of 1870 and the abolition of religious tests at Universities (1871).  Other gains for freedom will be noticed when I come to speak in another chapter of the progress of rationalism.

If we compare the religious situation in France in the seventeenth with that in the eighteenth century, it seems to be sharply contrasted with the development in England.  In England there was a great advance towards religious liberty, in France there was a falling away.  Until 1676 the French Protestants

[107] (Huguenots) were tolerated; for the next hundred years they were outlaws.  But the toleration, which their charter (the Edict of Nantes, 1598) secured them, was of a limited kind.  They were excluded, for instance, from the army; they were excluded from Paris and other cities and districts.  And the liberty which they enjoyed was confined to them; it was not granted to any other sect.  The charter was faithfully maintained by the two great Cardinals (Richelieu and Mazarin) who governed France under Louis XIII and Louis XIV, but when the latter assumed the active power in 1661 he began a series of laws against the Protestants which culminated in the revoking of the charter (1676) and the beginning of a Protestant persecution.