The question is, what security does the existing system of laws, as they now stand, afford the church establishment?  My lords, I am very dubious as to the amount of security afforded through the means of a system of exclusion from office, to be carried into effect by a law which it is necessary to suspend by an annual act, that admits every man into office whom it was the intention of the original framers of the law to exclude.  It is perfectly true it was not the intention of those who brought in that suspension law originally, that dissenters from the church of England should be permitted to enter into corporations under its provisions.  The law was intended to relieve those whom time or circumstances had rendered unable to qualify themselves according to the system which government had devised.  However, the dissenters availed themselves of the relaxation of the law, for the purpose of getting into corporations, and this the law allowed.  What security, then, I ask, my Lords, is to be found in the existing system?  So far from dissenters being excluded by the corporation and test acts, from all corporations, so far is this from being the fact, that, as must be well known to your Lordships, some corporations are absolutely and entirely in the possession of dissenters.  Can you suppose that the repeal of laws so inoperative as these, can afford any serious obstacle to the perfect security of the church, and the permanent union of that establishment with the state?  The fact is, that the existing laws have not only failed completely in answering their intended purpose, but they are anomalous and absurd—­anomalous in their origin, absurd in their operation.

If a man were asked the question, at his elevation to any corporate office, whether he had received the sacrament of the church of England, and if he said “No,” he lost every vote that had been tendered on his behalf, and there was an end of his election, but if, on the contrary, by accident or design, he got in without the question relative to the sacrament being put to him, then the votes tendered for him were held good, and his election valid; so that no power could remove him from the office which he held.  I ask, is there any security in that?  My noble friend says, that the original intention of the framers of these acts, was that the sacrament should not be taken by dissenters; but the law requires that a man, on entering into any corporation, shall receive the sacrament, without regard to his religious belief.  Thus an individual whose object it is to get into a particular office, may feel disposed, naturally enough, to take the sacrament before his election, merely as a matter of form, and thus a sacred rite of our church is profaned, and prostituted to a shameful and scandalous purpose.  I confess my Lords, I should have opposed this bill, if I thought it calculated to weaken the securities at present enjoyed by the church.  However, I agreed not to oppose the bill; though I consented in the first instance