Note 184 — 1772.

To understand some of the allusions, in these two political tracts, it is necessary to remember that, in 1772, a petition was presented to parliament, signed by about 250 of the clergy, and a considerable number of the members of the professions of civil law and physic, praying to be relieved from the necessity of subscribing to the thirty-nine articles of the Established Church; and that a bill was passed, in the House of Commons, annulling that part of the Act of Toleration which authorised the infliction of heavy penalties upon the ministers, schoolmasters, and private tutors of Dissenters, unless they subscribed to all the doctrinal parts of the thirty-nine articles. The bill passed the Commons triumphantly; the Lords, by a large majority, rejected it!