THREE:The Austrians being again expelled from Italy, Buonaparte, in his all-absorbing cupidity, determined to turn adrift the Pope, and add his little vineyard to his now cumbrously overgrown Ahab's domains. He had begun this spoliation in 1808, seizing on the greater part of the Pontiff's territories; sending away his cardinals, and reducing him to little better than a solitary prisoner in his own palace. This was an ungrateful return to the poor old Pope for making the long journey into France to crown him, and thus to give a sacred sanction to his usurpation of the imperial crown��a sanction of immense effect throughout the Catholic world. Pius VII. had given Buonaparte great offence by refusing to declare war on Great Britain, and thus keeping up a breach in his system of exclusion of British commerce. He had, therefore, already taken military possession of Civita Vecchia and Ancona, but he now resolved to take the whole temporal dominion from the Pope, and abrogate, by virtue of his assumed heirship of Charlemagne's realm, the gift of Charlemagne to the Church. On the 2nd of February, 1809, General Miollis, by order of Buonaparte, took possession of Rome, disarmed and disbanded the Pope's guard, and marched his other soldiers to the north, telling them they should no longer remain under the effeminate rule of a priest. Miollis then gave the Pontiff the alternative to join the French league, offensive and defensive, or to be deposed. The Pope firmly refused to concede his rights to anything but absolute force. On the 17th of May, therefore, Napoleon's decree for the deposition of the Pope from his temporal power was proclaimed. It assumed the heirship of Charlemagne to be in Buonaparte; declared the union of the spiritual and temporal powers to be the source of all scandals and discords in the Catholic Church; that they were, therefore, at an end��the Roman State for ever united to the French Empire. On the 10th of June Pius issued a bull excommunicating Buonaparte and all who aided him in his sacrilegious usurpation of the patrimony of St. Peter; and this was followed, on the 6th of July, by General Radet forcing the gates of the Vatican, taking possession of it with his troops, entering the presence of the Pope, who was amid his priests, and clad in his pontificals, and demanding that he should instantly sign a renunciation of all the temporal estates attached to the see of Rome. Pius declared that he neither could nor would perform any such sacrilegious act. He was then informed that he must quit Rome. Pius was detained at Savona three years, and was then removed to Fontainebleau.

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THREE:In the following June Lord Stanhope again came forward with a Bill to remove some of these enactments, and he showed that the literal fulfilment of several of them was now impossible; that as to compelling every man to go to church, by returns lately made to that House it was shown that there were four millions more people in England than all the churches of the Establishment could contain. With respect to the Church enforcing uniformity, he said that the variations between the Book of Common Prayer printed at Oxford and that printed at Cambridge amounted to above four thousand. His Bill was again thrown out by thirty-one against ten; but his end was gained. He had brought the injustice towards the Dissenters so frequently forward, and it was now so glaring, and the Dissenters themselves were become so numerous and influential, that the question could be no longer blinked. On the majority being pronounced against the Bill, Lord Holland rose and asked whether, then, there was to be nothing done to remove the disabilities under which Dissenters laboured? If that were the case, he should be under the necessity of bringing forward a measure on that subject himself. This compelled Ministers to promise that something should be done; and, on the 10th of the same month, Lord Castlereagh proposed to bring in a Bill to repeal certain Acts, and to amend others respecting persons teaching or preaching in certain religious assemblies. This Act, when explained, went to repeal the 13 and 14 Charles II., which imposed penalties on Quakers and others who should refuse to take oaths; the 16 of Charles II., known as the Five Mile Act, which prohibited any preacher who refused to take the non-resistance oath coming within five miles of any corporation where he had preached since the Act of Oblivion, under a penalty of fifty pounds; and the 17, which also imposed fine and imprisonment on them for attempting to teach a school unless they went to church and subscribed a declaration of conformity. It also repealed the 22 Charles II., commonly called the Conventicle Act. Instead of those old restraints, his Act simply required the registration of all places of worship in the bishop's or archdeacon's court; that they must not be locked, bolted, or barred during divine service, and that the preachers must be licensed according to the 19 George III. These conditions being complied with, all persons officiating in, or resorting to such places of worship, became entitled to all the benefits of the Toleration Act, and the disturbance of their assemblies became a punishable offence. This Bill passed both Houses, and became known as the Statute of 52 George III. It was a great step in the progress of religious freedom; and Mr. William Smith, the leader of the Dissenting interests in the House of Commons, expressed his heartfelt gratification at this proof of the increasing liberality of the times.

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