This Act, thus originated, which lingered in the Statute Book till the reign of George IV., which even thoroughly religious men could be so blinded by their prejudices as to defend, and which even such friends of toleration as Lord Mansfield could declare to be a 'bulwark of the Constitution,'[389] put occasional conformity into a very different position from that which it would naturally take. Henceforth no Dissenter could communicate in the parish churches of his country without incurring some risk of an imputation which is especially revolting to all feelings alike of honour and religion. He might have it cast in his teeth that he was either committing or countenancing the sacrilegious hypocrisy, the base and shuffling trick, of communicating only to qualify for office. It is needless here to enter into the details of the excited and discreditable agitation by which the custom of occasional conformity was at length, for a time, defeated. The contest may be said to have begun in 1697, when Sir Humphrey Edwin, upon his election as Lord Mayor, after duly receiving the Sacrament according to the use of the Church of England, proceeded in state to the Congregational Chapel at Pinner's Hall.[390] Exactly the same thing recurred in 1701, in the case of Sir T. Abney.[391] The practice thus publicly illustrated was passionately opposed both by strict Dissenters and by strict Churchmen. De Foe, as a representative of the former, inveighed against it with great bitterness, as perfectly scandalous, and altogether unjustifiable.[392] The High Church party, on their side, reprobated it with no less severity. A bill to prevent the practice was at once prepared. In spite of the strength of the Tory and High Church reaction, the Whig party in the House of Lords, vigorously supported by the Liberal Bishops, just succeeded in throwing it out. A conference was held between the two houses, 'the most crowded that ever had been known--so much weight was laid on this matter on both sides,'[393] with a similar result. The Commons made other endeavours to carry the Act in a modified form, and with milder penalties; a somewhat unscrupulous minority made an attempt to tack it to a money bill, and so effect their purpose by a manoeuvre. The Sacheverell episode fanned the strange excitement that prevailed. A large body of the country gentry and country clergy imagined that the destinies of the Church hung in the balance. The populace caught the infection, without any clear understanding what they were clamouring for. The Court, until it began to be alarmed, used all its influence in support of the proposed bill. Everywhere, but especially in coffee-houses and taverns,[394] a loud cry was raised against the Whigs, and most of all against the Whig Bishops, for their steady opposition to it. At last, when all chance of carrying the measure seemed to be lost, it was suddenly made law through what appears to have been a most