medicine. The two complaints admitted of separate consideration, but only the first seems to have been really discussed in the debate which arose in the House of Commons on the petition. Burke and Dowdeswell joined Fletcher Norton in successfully opposing the motion for bringing it up, while Dunning, Townshend, and Barre took an opposite course, and were joined by Sir George Saville, who on this occasion, as on several others at the same period, separated himself from his friends of the Rockingham connection.[1]
Shelburne, however, and his friends took a far more lively interest in the extension of the Toleration Act than in the objects of the Feathers Tavern petition, and it was this interest, joined to his connection with Dr. Price on the one hand and Chatham on the other, which encouraged the Nonconformists at this moment to apply to the latter through him to help them in their projected attempt at the abolition of subscription to the Articles of Faith.
"The immediate occasion of my troubling you," writes Shelburne to Chatham on March 18th, "is that Dr. Price, whose books I some time since sent you, has desired to know of me when you would be in town; it being the intention of the Presbyterian clergy to wait on you, to communicate their intention of applying to Parliament for relief in the matter of subscription. This matter has been in agitation some time since, but it was their intention to have deferred it till the next Session, if some of their brethren who receive the royal bounty money had not thought it their duty to acquaint the Treasury of it.
"Mr. Onslow upon this sent to desire that he might have the honour of bringing in their Bill, and to acquaint them of the concurrence of Lord North, Lord Mansfield, and a warm support from Elliot, Dyson, &c. The Bishops,
- ↑ Lord Shelburne's brother, Mr. Fitzmaurice, was amongst those who opposed the petition. "Colonel Barré also," says Walpole, "was not present. His absence and Mr. Fitzmaurice's conduct showed Lord Shelburne was willing to make his peace at Court."—(Walpole Journals, i. 10.) A reference to the Division Lists of the House of Commons shows that Barré was present and voted, while the speech of Mr. Fitzmaurice was only devoted to maintaining the reasonable position, that it is almost impossible for a Church to exist without formulas of some kind, and that these formulas are sure to exclude a certain number of conscientious persons.
