issues were raised which inevitably divided and ultimately broke up the cabinet. [Pageheading: _TEST ACTS REPEALED._] The first of these difficulties was caused by the success of Lord John Russell's motion for the repeal of the test and corporation acts, under which dissenters were precluded from holding municipal and other offices. It was, indeed, a grave blot on the consistency of reformers that, while the claims of Roman catholics, and especially of Irish Roman catholics, had been vehemently urged for nearly thirty years, those of protestant nonconformists had been coldly neglected. Their legal disabilities, it is true, had gradually become almost nominal, and an indemnity act was passed yearly to cover the constant breaches of the obnoxious law. Still, the law was maintained, and was stoutly defended by such tories as Eldon on the principle that it was an important outwork of the union between Church and State. Even the Canningite members of the government supported it against Russell's attack, but on the very opposite ground--that it had become a dead letter. However, the measure for its repeal was carried in the house of commons by a majority of forty-four, including some well-known Churchmen. This measure would assuredly have been rejected in the house of lords had not Peel judiciously procured the insertion of a clause substituting for the sacramental test a declaration binding the office-holder to do nothing hostile to the Church. Thus modified, it passed the house of lords, with the assent of several bishops, in spite of the implacable opposition of Lords Eldon and Redesdale, and the Duke of Cumberland. But the declaration was amended by the addition of the words "upon the true faith of a Christian," which incidentally continued the statutable exclusion of Jews.