amination, to adopt and to profess what may appear to them to be the truth; and that in the performance of that duty men ought not to be obstructed or discouraged or otherwise tempted to act hypocritically, by any law, tending to bias them in the course of such examination of the doctrines of religion, by subjecting them in the case of their dissenting from the doctrines of any established church, to suffer death by burning or otherwise, or to suffer any corporal or pecuniary punishment, or to be injured in their reputation by any disability more or less disgraceful.

That your petitioners acknowledge with high satisfaction, that in the present reign considerable progress has been made towards the full restoration of the rights of conscience by the

wisdom of Parliament and the benignity of the King, rescinding various laws in whole or in part which were violations of those rights; yet since other penal laws, not less injurious to those rights remain unrepealed; since some of these laws subject to corporal punishments or pecuniary penalties; others, as in the case of the test-laws passed in the reign of Charles the 2d, subject to disgrace, disability and privation of civil rights, persons whose only offence it is, that in conformity with their duty, they have examined the doctrines of religion, and by such examination have been induced to embrace and to profess religious opinions different from the doctrines of the established church; your Petitioners feel it to be their duty humbly but earnestly to remonstrate against the longer continuance of any of these intolerant laws; and

they do in conformity with the premises, expressly petition this Honourable House, that every such unjust law may be repealed, and the rights of conscience may thus be restored to all the subjects of this United Kingdom. At the same time they declare to this Honourable House, that if the legislature of our country should not feel themselves convinced as your Petitioners do, that every trace of intolerance ought to be immediately expunged from our statutes, yet if the repeal or modification of any of our intolerant laws should now take place, particularly if the test-laws, as far as they affect our military force by sea and land, should now be repealed, your Petitioners would view with sincere gratitude any such measure, as a still farther advance towards the complete restoration of the rights of conscience, and at this

crisis would consider it as having a salutary tendency to allay religious animosities, and to

unite the great mass of the community, in a zealous defence of the empire against the meditated attack of our gigantic and all-grasping enemy.

And your petitioners shall ever pray.

yroodmami så ut bilgi.

To the Christians' Petition, for Liberty of Conscience the signatures annexed by Roman Catholics, members of the Church of England, and Protestant Dissenters which are contained in sixteen duplicates amount to, viz. ....