The Sun.
London, England, 1853-06-01 00:00:00

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LONDON, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 1, 1853.

In the olden time England was an oath-swear-
ing nation ; men were not only invited, but abso-
lutely required to appeal to the DEIT on
numerous occasions and under the most trivial
pretexts. Not only were oaths administered in
the appointment to any office, but at the mere
will and pleasure of any person who desired to
put the law in operation. We had test oaths,
promissory oaths, and fiscal oaths ; and even a
oonscientious refusal to take an oath explanatory
of the conscientious opinions of the party was
visited not only with civil disabilities, but
with the most stringent penalties. Even death
itself was but too frequently inflicted for a refusal
to subscribe the required tests or to acknowledge
the supremacy of the CROWN in matters of re-
ligion, which was construed into an act of high
treason against the Sovereign for the time being.
The cruel persecution to which the Covenanters
were exposed—the massacre of Glencoe, perpe-
trated against the inhabitants of an entire dis-
trict, helpless females and innocent children
being included in the bloodshed, because phy-
sical obstacles prevented the arrival of the
Chiefs of the Clan to take the oaths on
the very day indicated, and the blood of the
best and bravest poured forth like water on the
scaffold, but too unequivocally attested the fear-
ful importance attached to the submission of the
people to " the ordeal by swearing."

When those brutal enactments were to a certain
extent repealed, and the deepest portion of the
scandalous blot erased from the national statute-
book, other very objectionable provisions were
still retained. Our fiscal code was founded on a
system of affidavits. The smallest article could
not be imported into the country without a series
of oaths being required from the parties interested,
the Legislature appearing to place greater confi-
dence in the efficacy of these oaths than of the
preventive forees employed to guard our shores.
It is almost unnecessary to allude to the demorali-
sation that prevailed so extensively under the
circumstances. It is now a matter of history.
Suffice it to say that there was an organised sys-
tem of smuggling, with ramifications spreading
through the entire kingdom, and that the
inefficacy of " Custom-house Oaths," and
the habitual disregard of such obligations, became
matters of too painful notoriety. The truth of
the adage, that " too much familiarity breeds
contempt," received another and a very powerful
illustration. It was clearly proved that the so-
called obligations were worse than uselessas a pro-
tection to the revenue, their only effect being the
inducement to dispense with the other and more
efficient checks ; and they were at length virtually
abolished with the concurrence, and at the unani-
mous desire, of the entire community.
But although fiscal swearing was thus practi-

tally got rid of, political swearing still flourished
in rank luxuriance. It is true that the stake or
the scaffold was no longer resorted to as gentle
remedies for non-conformity—we had still civil
disabilities to operate as penalties for disagree-
ment with the State religion. Men were excluded
from situations of honour and emolument, because
they worshipped their CREATOR in the manner
which in their soul and conscience they be-
lieved to be most acceptable to the DEITY.
And even the veteran who had well and
faithfully served his country in the hour of
emergency, found the payment of his half-pay or
pension withheld if he refused to do that which
his religious convictions induced him to believe to
be absolutely forbidden by the Gospel, or to be at
least an impious mockery.
A wiser, a more tolerant, and, in every respect,
a
more politic course was at length adopted. It
was deemed expedient and just that the Dissenters
and Roman Cotholics should no longer be excluded
from corporation
o and other offices, or from seats
nions.
The
Tensta:count of their religious opi-
pealed, Roman Catholic Corporation Acts were re-
civil and religious fre:dmanciPation carried, and
conceded, the absence
of exclusion or disabilitonloffor conscience sake be-
came
a leading principle'
of the. British Constitu-
tion ; and these great actsby a
ytinsittthhic:rA,weetare
(4 withinwm
recognition
a few years followed
of the freedom of opinion, b
4, cap. 49 and 82), which enabled Quakers, mo
and Separatists to make their solemn affir--
vians,
mation in lieu of an oath in all cases of civil or
criminal procedure, an act of liberality which was 1
followed in the very same year (1833) by the
reception of an (affirmation by Mr. PBASE (a
member of the Society of Friends), in place of the
oaths ordered to be taken by a Member of the
House of Commons. Too much gratuitous and
unnecessary swearing, however, Still remained.