Hoadley owed much of his influence with the Whig party to the fact that he had always shown himself very friendly to Dissenters, and was in favour of abolishing the iniquitous Test and Corporation Acts and other disabilities under which they laboured; the animosity of his enemies arose quite as much from this fact as from their dislike of his opinions. The Protestant Nonconformists were the backbone of the Whig party, and the staunchest supporters of the House of Hanover; they therefore, not unnaturally, expected, in return for their great political services, that the disabilities which pressed upon them should be removed. From time to time they gained certain points, and the Acts were rendered practically innocuous by annual indemnities; but still they disfigured the Statute Book, and to this the Dissenters rightly objected. In 1730 a determined attempt was made by the Dissenters throughout England to secure the repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, and they resolved to present a monster petition to Parliament praying that the matter should be proceeded with forthwith. This action put the Government into a position of considerable difficulty, and it was entirely opposed to Walpole’s policy of letting sleeping dogs lie. Though both he and the Queen (we will leave the King out of the question, as he does not count) had the fullest sympathy with the aspirations of Dissenters; yet they saw that to raise this question at the present time would be to fan the smouldering embers of religious controversy, and would put new heart and strength into the Opposition. The clergy of the established Church, almost to a man, would be against them, and, with a general election impending, that would mean that the Government would have an active enemy in every parish and hamlet in the kingdom. Such a reform, though just and reasonable in itself, would have the effect of alienating a number of the Government’s lukewarm supporters, and would give an opportunity for the Roman Catholics to assert themselves and claim relief also, for they were far more cruelly oppressed than the Protestant Dissenters.