faction had been cool-headed enough for such reflections, it has, unfortunately, been sometimes less the aim of the clergy to reconcile those who differ from them than to keep them in a state of dishonour and depression. Hence, in the first parliament of Anne, a bill to prevent occasional conformity more than once passed the Commons; and, on its being rejected by the Lords, a great majority of William's bishops voting against the measure, it was sent up again in a very reprehensible manner, tacked, as it was called, to a grant of money; so that, according to the pretension of the Commons in respect to such bills, the upper house must either refuse the supply, or consent to what they disapproved.[355] This however having miscarried, and the next parliament being of better principles, nothing farther was done till 1711, when Lord Nottingham, a vehement high-churchman, having united with the whigs against the treaty of peace, they were injudicious enough to gratify him by concurring in a bill to prevent occasional conformity.[356] This was followed up by the ministry in a more decisive attack on the toleration, an act for preventing the growth of schism, which extended and confirmed one of Charles II., enforcing on all schoolmasters, and even on all teachers in private families, a declaration of conformity to the established church, to be made before the bishop, from whom a licence for exercising that profession was also to be obtained.[357] It is impossible to doubt for an instant, that if the queen's life had preserved the tory government for a few years, every vestige of the toleration would have been effaced.