The attack on the slave-trade, which began while England was at peace with her neighbours, had slackened in the shadow of the long war. The wicked traffic was prohibited in 1807; but little more could be done before 1823. Then an appeal for emancipation in the West Indies was made to Parliament by Wilberforce and other organised abolitionists; and the agitation went on until victory was made possible by the rescue of the House of Commons from the aristocrats. The acts forbidding workingmen to combine for higher wages, or to emigrate were repealed in 1824. The criminal laws had already been mitigated, and some protection given to children in factories; and the duties on wool and raw silk were now reduced, to the common benefit of consumer, manufacturer, and operative. The Whigs were strong enough in 1828 to repeal the Test Act, which had been passed in 1673, for the purpose of enabling the Episcopalians to hold all the offices, but had become a dead letter so far as regarded Protestants. The House of Lords gave way unwillingly; and one of the bishops secured such a compromise as kept Jews out of Parliament for the next thirty years. Conscientious scruples against taking oaths were treated at this time with due respect; and all British Protestants became equals before the law. Canning had already made the House of Commons willing to emancipate Catholics; but neither this reform nor that of abolishing rotten boroughs could pass the bench of bishops; and the Church stood in the way of a plan for free public schools. It was the organised resistance of all Ireland to disfranchisement of Catholics which won toleration from a Tory Ministry. Its leader, Wellington, cared nothing for public opinion or the people's rights; but he was too good a general to risk a war with a united nation. Even the minister whose sympathy with Orangemen had won the nickname of "Orange Peel" declared that it was time to yield. Popular prejudice against Romanism had been much diminished by gratitude for the aid given by Catholic allies against Napoleon. The bishops rallied around the King, who had never before been influenced by what he called religion; but he was forced to sign, on April 13, 1829, the bill which ended a strife that had cursed Europe for three hundred years. Two-thirds of the bishops resisted to the last; and the Tory party was so badly divided as to be unable to prevent England from following the example set next year by France.