once more apparent between the Whigs and the Tories. With Wellington, Lord John had of course neither part nor lot, and when the Duke accepted office he promptly ranged himself in the opposite camp. [Sidenote: RELIGIOUS EQUALITY] Ireland was on the verge of rebellion when Wellington and Peel took office, and in the person of O'Connell it possessed a leader of splendid eloquence and courage, who pressed the claims of the Roman Catholics for immediate relief from religious disabilities. Whilst the Government was deliberating upon the policy which they ought to pursue in presence of the stormy and menacing agitation which had arisen in Ireland, the Protestant Dissenters saw their opportunity, and rallied their forces into a powerful organisation for the total repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. Their cause had been quietly making way, through the Press and the platform, during the dark years for political and religious liberty which divide 1820 from 1828, and the Protestant Society had kept the question steadily before the public mind. Meanwhile that organisation had itself become a distinct force in the State. 'The leaders of the Whig party now formally identified themselves with it. In one year the Duke of Sussex took the chair; in another Lord Holland occupied the same position; Sir James Mackintosh delivered from its platform a defence of religious liberty, such as had scarcely been given to the English people since the time of Locke; and Lord John Russell, boldly identifying himself and his party with the political interests of Dissenters, came forward as chairman in another year, to advocate the full civil and religious rights of the three millions who were now openly connected with one or other of the Free Churches. The period of the Revolution, when Somers, Halifax, Burnet, and their associates laid the foundations of constitutional government, seemed to have returned.'[4] Immediately Parliament assembled, Lord John Russell--backed by many petitions from the Nonconformists--gave notice that on February 26 it was his intention to move the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts.