PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
C.O.
Reference -
885
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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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Colonies is in theory subject to the ecclesiastical
law of England, administered, in the last resort, by the Queen in Council
It
4. But this law cannot be practically enforced in the Colonies; for there are no Ecclesiastical Courts (with some exceptions, I believe, in the West Indies). And we have been advised by the Crown lawyers that the Crown cannot establish any. must be done by Imperial or by Colonial law. In all letters-patent creating Colonial bishoprics we profess to give the bishop certain judicial powers, and an ultimate appeal from him to the Archbishop of Canterbury; but I am wholly at a loss to know
how these provisions could be legally worked.
5. In this anarchy (for it is no less) the power of
a bishop over the clergy is practically almost absolute in some things, null in others. No one can officiate in a diocese, nor be transferred from one cure to another, without his license, and there'is nothing whatever to control him in giving or refusing it. But if a clergyman misconducts himself the bishop certainly cannot try him, having no courts, and I will not undertake to say what his power may be as to arbitrary withdrawal of the license.
6. In New South Wales, Victoria, and Van Dieman's Land, the Colonial Legislatures have come, to a certain extent, to the aid of discipline, by enacting that the Government salary shall be for- feited in certain cases, by absence, of those adjudicated on "according to the custom of the religious com- munity," &c. But this limited interference exists only where clergymen have Government salaries, which is becoming continually a more exceptional case.
Under these circumstances would it be politic at once to take the bold course of repealing all the law of England so far as it affects, or may in any way be supposed to affect, the Church of England in the Colonies? That is to say, abolishing the Church of England in the Colonies, and leaving in lieu of it the Protestant Episcopal Churches of Quebec, Montreal, Sydney, Tasmania, &c., all independent, to create their own constitutions for themselves, with or without the aid of the Colonial Legislatures, as these might think proper to afford it.
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The difficulty of wording an Act of Parliament for such a purpose would be considerable, but not, I think, amounting to a serious objection.
I have no objection of my own to offer to it on general grounds, political or religious. I believe it would be only doing at ouce what must inevitably be otherwise done by degrees.
But I am bound to lay before you the minor, but still very serious, difficulties which seem to me to stand in the way.
I do not speak here of Parliamentary difficulties, or those which may arise from public policy here; of those
you are the judge. To me, upon what I
have observed of the temper of the nation and Parliament for some years, they would seem almost insuperable.
But be this as it may, let us consider the effect of such a measure on the Colonial Churches them- selves.
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The Church of England is the only religious body of any magnitude known to me which has no Government acting independently of the State. Roman Catholic, in one of our colonies, is a member of a community governed by regular authorities subject ultimately to Rome. Though his subjection is entirely voluntary, it is as completely under defi- nite rule and practice as if established by law. In like manner, the Scotch member of the Kirk in the Colonies is ultimately governed by the Assembly; the Wesleyan by the Conference, and so forth. Each may break the tic as soon as he pleases; but he cannot break it in part-the separation must be absolute: if he refuses allegiance to the governing body, he ceases to be a Roman Catholic, a Kirkman, or a Wesleyan.
Now the Church of England has no Pope, Assem- bly, or Conference. The member of the Church of England in a colony is (ecclesiastically) subject to bis bishop, his bishop is subject to no one; no one can demand from him an account of his conduct, for there are no regular means, that I know of, even of bringing him before so imperfect a court of appeal
as the Judicial Committee. But both laymen and bishop, though without any actual court of appeal over them, are subject to the theoretical legal ties,