The other, commonly known as the Five Mile Act, forbade all ministers, of any sect, who did not subscribe to the Act of Uniformity, and who refused to swear to their belief in the doctrine of passive obedience, from teaching in any school, and from coming within five miles of any city, corporate town, or borough sending members to Parliament, or any town or village in which they themselves had resided as ministers.

The latter statute had fallen into complete disuse, and many of the provisions of the former had been relaxed, though magistrates in general construed the relaxing enactments as leaving the relaxations wholly at their discretion to grant or to withhold, and were very much in the habit of withholding or abridging them.

Other statutes, such as the Test Act, had subsequently been passed against every sect of Dissenters, though they had only imposed civil disabilities, and had not inflicted penalties.

But the new Prime-minister was a man to whose disposition anything resembling persecution was foreign and repugnant.

Before his predecessor's unhappy death he had already discussed with him the propriety of abolishing laws conceived in such a spirit; and he no sooner found himself at the head of the government than he prepared a bill to carry out his views.