Page:A general history for colleges and high schools (Myers, 1890).djvu/800

722 Disabilities removed from the Catholics (1829).—The bill of 1828 gave no relief to Catholics. They were still excluded from Parliament and various civil offices by the declarations of belief and the oaths required of office-holders,—declarations and oaths which no good Catholic could conscientiously make. They now demanded that the same concessions be made them that had been granted Protestant dissenters. The ablest champion of Catholic emancipation was the eloquent Daniel O'Connell, an Irish patriot. A threatened revolt on the part of the Irish Catholics hurried the progress of what was known as the Catholic Emancipation Act through Parliament. This law opened all the offices of the kingdom, below the crown,—save that of Lord Chancellor of England and Ireland, the Viceroyalty of Ireland, and a few others,—to the Catholic subjects of the realm.

Disabilities removed from the Jews.—The Jews were still laboring under all the disabilities which had now been removed from Protestant dissenters and Catholics. In 1845 an act was passed by Parliament which so changed the oath required for admission to corporate offices—the oath contained the words "on the faith of a Christian "—as to open them to Jews.

In 1858, after a long and unseemly struggle, the House of Commons was opened to the long-proscribed race; and about a quarter of a century later, the House of Lords admitted to a seat Baron Rothschild, the first peer of Hebrew faith that had ever sat in that body.

Disestablishment of the Irish Church (1369).—Thirty years after the Catholic Emancipation Act, the English government took another great step in the direction of religious equality, by the disestablishment of the State Church in Ireland.

The Irish have always and steadily refused to accept the religion which their English conquerors have somehow felt constrained to force upon them. The vast majority of the people are to-day and ever have been Catholics; yet up to the time where we have now arrived these Irish Catholics had been compelled to pay tithes and fees for the maintenance among them of the Anglican Church