Canning’s ministry was too brief to give time for any transaction of internal importance.  That of Lord Goderich, who succeeded him, though longer by the almanac, was practically briefer still, since it never met Parliament at all, but was formed and fell to pieces between the prorogation and the next meeting of the Houses.  But that which followed, under the presidency of the Duke of Wellington, though after a few months its composition became entirely Tory, is memorable for the first great departure from those maxims of the constitution which had been reckoned among its most essential principles ever since the Revolution.  Of the measures which bear that character, one was carried against the resistance of the ministry, the other by the ministers themselves.  And it may at first sight appear singular that the larger measure of the two was proposed by the Duke after those members of his cabinet who had originally been supposed to give it something of a Liberal complexion had quitted it.  The Reform Bill of 1832—­to which we shall come in the next chapter—­has been often called a peaceful revolution.  The Toleration Acts, as we may call the bills of 1828 and 1829, are scarcely less deserving of that character.

The constitution, as it had existed for the last hundred and forty years, had been not only a Protestant but a Church of England constitution.  Not only all Roman Catholics, but all members of Protestant Non-conforming sects, all who refused to sign a declaration against the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and also to take the Sacrament according to the rites of the one Established Church, were disqualified for any appointment of trust.  That the object with which the Test Act had been framed and supported was rather political than religious is notorious; indeed, it was supported by the Protestant Dissenters, though they themselves were to suffer by its operation, so greatly at that time did the dread of Popery and the French King overpower every other consideration.[192] On the Roman Catholics, after the reign of James II. had increased that apprehension, the restrictions were tightened.  But those which inflicted disabilities on the Protestant Non-conformists had been gradually relaxed.  The repeal of two, the Five Mile and the Conventicle Acts, had, as we have seen in the last chapter, been recent measures of Lord Liverpool.  But the Test Act still remained, though it had long been practically a dead letter.  The Union with Scotland, where the majority of the population was Presbyterian, had rendered it almost impossible to maintain the exclusion of Englishmen resembling the Scotch in their religious tenets from preferments, and even from seats in the House of Commons, to which Scotchmen were admissible.  And though one Prime-minister (Stanhope) failed in his attempt to induce Parliament to repeal the Test Act, and his successor (Walpole) refused his countenance to any repetition of the proposal, even he did not reject such a compromise as was devised to evade it; and