The eleventh section further enacts, that every teacher or preacher in Holy Orders, or pretended Holy Orders, that is a minister, preacher, or teacher of a congregation, that shall take the oaths herein required, and make and subscribe the declaration aforesaid, and also subscribe such of the aforesaid Articles of the Church of England, as are required by this Act in manner aforesaid, shall be thenceforth exempted from serving upon any jury, or from being chosen or appointed to bear the office of Churchwarden, Overseer of the Poor, or any other parochial or Ward office, or other office in any hundred of any shire, city, town, parish, division or wapentake."

By the twelfth section, every Justice of the Peace may require any person that goes to meet ing, for the exercise of Religion, to subscribe the declaration, and take the oaths; and such person refusing to do so, is to be committed to prison without bail or mainprise, till the following Quarter Sessions, where, refusing upon a second tender, he shall suffer as a popish recusant convict, The people called Quakers are alone affected by the thirteenth section.

It is provided by the fourteenth section, that no person who shall have refused as aforesaid shall be afterwards admitted to make and subscribe the declarations required from Quakers, unless he can produce two Protestants to testify upon oath that they believe him to be a Protestant Dissenter, or a certificate under the hand of four

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Protestants, and also another certificate under the hands and seals of six or more sufficient men of the congregation to which he belongs, owning him for one of them: and the justice is directed by the fifteenth section, until compliance with these requisites, to bind him in the sum of fifty pounds to produce the same, and commit him to prison till he gives such security, or produces such evidence.

All the laws at that time in being for frequenting divine service on Sundays are, by the sixteenth section declared to continue in force, and required to be executed against all persons that offend against the said laws, except those who attend some congregation or assembly for religious worship, allowed or permitted by the Act in question. The seventeenth section pointedly disclaims all intention "to give any ease, benefit, or advantage, to any Papist, or Popish recusant whatsoever, or any person that shall deny in his preaching or writing, the doctrine of the Blessed. Trinity, as it is declared in the aforesaid articles of religion,"

The eighteenth section provides, and enacts, "That if any person or persons at any time or times after the tenth day of June, do and shall willingly and of purpose, maliciously or contemptuously come into any Cathedral, or ParishChurch, Chapel, or other congregation permitted by this Act, and disquiet, or disturb the same, or misuse any preacher or teacher, such person or

persons upon proof thereof before any justice of peace, by two or more sufficient witnesses, shall find two sureties to be bound by recognizance in the penal sum of fifty pounds, and in default of such sureties, shall be committed to prison, there to remain till the next general or Quarter-Sessions ; and upon conviction of the said offence at the said General or Quarter-Sessions, shall suffer the pain and penalty of twenty-pounds, to the use of the King's and Queen's Majesties, their heirs and successors."

By the nineteenth section it is provided " that no congregation or assembly for religious worship, shall be permitted or allowed by this Act, until the place of such meeting shall be certified to the bishop of thediocese, or to the archdeacon of that archdeaconry, or to the justices of the peace at the general or Quarter-Sessions of the peace for the county, city, or place, in which such meeting shall be held, and registered in the said bishop's or archdeacon's court respectively, or recorded at the general or Quarter-Sessions; the register or clerk of the peace whereof respectively is hereby required to register the same, and to give certificate thereof to such person as shall demand the same, for which there shall be no greater fee nor reward taken, than the sum of six-pence."

Before offering any remarks on this Act of Parliament, it seems proper to lay the entire subject at once before the reader, by pursuing the history of those privileges which are granted by it, through

the several Statutes, by which they have been confirmed and extended subsequently to the reign of King William. The first of these, passed in the reign of Queen Anne, enacts and declares "That the Toleration granted to the Protestant Dissenters, by the Act made in the first year of the reign of King William and Queen Mary, intituled, An Act for exempting their majesties' Protestant subjects, dissenting from the church of England, from the penalties of certain laws, shall be and is hereby ratified and confirmed, and that the same act shall at all times be inviolably observed for the exempting of such Protestant Dissenters as are thereby intended, from the pains and penalties therein mentioned." It is declared and enacted by the eighth section, That if any person dissenting from the Church of England (not in Holy Orders, or pretended Holy Orders, or pretending to Holy Orders, nor any teacher or preacher of any congregation) who would have been entitled to the benefit of the Toleration Act, if he had qualified according to its provisions, then was or should thereafter be prosecuted under any of the penal statutes, from which Protestant Dissenters are exempted by the said Act, shall take the oaths, &c. during prosecution, he shall be entitled to the benefit of that Act, and shall be thenceforth exempted and discharged from the penalties and forfeitures incurred by force of any of the aforesaid penal statutes. And the ninth section gives permission

to any teacher or preacher of any congregation of Dissenting Protestants, duly qualified according to the said Act in any one county, to officiate in any registered meeting in any other county.

An Act passed in the first year of King George the First; "for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies, and for the more speedy and effectual punishing the rioters," (1. G. 1. St. 2. c. 5. § 4.) extends incidentally the protection of the law to bodies of Dissenters, by enacting, That if any persons unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together, to the disturbance of the public peace, shall unlawfully, and with force demolish or pull down or begin to demolish or pull down any church or chapel, or any building for religious worship, certified and registered according to the Statute made in the first year of the reign of the late King William and Queen Mary, intituled, an Act, for exempting their Majesties Protestant subjects, dissenting from the Church of England from the penalties of certain laws, that then every such demolishing, or pulling down, or beginning to demolish or pull down, shall be adjudged felony without benefit of clergy, and the offenders therein shall be adjudged felons, and shall suffer death as in case of felony without benefit of clergy.

The next law relating to this subject, passed in the nineteenth year of his present Majesty, professedly" for the further relief of Protestant Dissenting ministers and schoolmasters," -- an