In the meantime legal toleration had been extended to the Unitarians in
1813, but they were not relieved from all disabilities till the forties.
Jews were not admitted to the full rights of citizenship till 1858.
The achievement of religious liberty in England in the nineteenth
century has been mainly the work of Liberals. The Liberal
[106] party has been moving towards the ultimate goal of complete
secularization and the separation of the Church from the State-- the
logical results of Locke's theory of civil government. The
Disestablishment of the Church in Ireland in 1869 partly realized this
ideal, and now more than forty years later the Liberal party is seeking
to apply the principle to Wales. It is highly characteristic of English
politics and English psychology that the change should be carried out in
this piecemeal fashion. In the other countries of the British Empire the
system of Separation prevails; there is no connection between the State
and any sect; no Church is anything more than a voluntary society. But
secularization has advanced under the State Church system. It is enough
to mention the Education Act of 1870 and the abolition of religious
tests at Universities (1871). Other gains for freedom will be noticed
when I come to speak in another chapter of the progress of rationalism.
If we compare the religious situation in France in the seventeenth with
that in the eighteenth century, it seems to be sharply contrasted with
the development in England.
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