13
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
FILETTI
C.O.
Reference -
885
12
brother, the Chaplain to that body, is likewise Rector of St. Dorothy's), who after characterizing it as a Bill of pains and penalties against the Clergy, and declaring that the Bishop already possessed ample power under his patent to 'enforce discipline, moved that it should be referred to a Select Committee, which at that late period of the Session proved tantamount to its rejection.
"The unsatisfactory position of affairs which I have described has thus been prolonged, but I amı confident that, despite the Chief Justice's objections, public opinion will ere long compel an alteration of the law (I only trust it may not be in a more hostile spirit towards the Church), for, as asserted by the Honourable Mr. Edwards in his reply to his Honour, the ancient ecclesiastical law of England, even if it be really in force as regards Jamaica, requires such cumbrous and expensive machinery as to render it practically useless, whilst it is more than doubtful whether that law could, as matters stand, be appealed to, since, for reasons with which I am unacquainted, the last Act in which Her Majesty's letters - patent conferring jurisdiction thereunder upon the Bishop were recognized by the Island Legislature, was suffered to expire in 1845."
C. C.
Colonial Office,
February 1856.
COPY of a LETTER from the Bishop of JAMAICA to the Right Honourable Sir JOHN S. PAKINGTON, Bart.
Bishop's Lodge, Jamaica, August 28, 1852.
I HAVE had the honour of receiving your despatch of the 30th July, accompanied by printed copies of the two Bills successively proposed by Mr. Gladstone for the regulation of the Australian Church, and for the Church in certain other Colonies, together with the reports of your speech delivered in the House of Commons on the second reading of the first of these Bills, which was consequently, and I think, notwithstanding my high admiration for its proposer, happily withdrawn.
I am very grateful for the opening thus afforded me by your despatch for bringing to your kind consideration the state of the Church in my diocese, with the confidence of your being equally willing and able to effect some improvement in its constitution and working, of which, in common with the Church establishments subsisting in other Colonies, it stands undoubtedly in need.
It was certainly a matter of congratulation to me, and, I believe, generally to the clergy and laity of our communion in Jamaica, that it was not thought necessary by Mr. Gladstone to include this Colony in the operation of his Bill. The Church in the West Indies, however imperfect in its organization, and fettered in its administration, is obviously in a very different position from that of the Church of the Australian and North American Colonies. We have here a direct and accredited recognition by the local legislature, and by the large majority of the educated population, of the Church as an Establishment. We have an endowment, so far as a perpetual Act providing for the maintenance of incumbents may be so construed; and we have a series of laws, all nising the principle of an Established Church, spread over a period of nearly recog- two centuries, for our support. We have an episcopate, territorially defined, with a pecuniary provision permanently provided and fixed on the Consolidated Fund by an Act of the Imperial Parliament. There is here, amongst both clergy and laity, a warm and enlightened attachment to the union of Church and State; to the identity of the Colonial with the English Church; to the supremacy of the Sovereign; to the exercise of Crown patronage, as it now obtains conjointly by the Governor and the Bishop; and to the sustainment of the diocese as an integral part of the Church of England and Ireland, in its proper character as suffragan to the metropolitical see of Canterbury, and no other.
With these advantages of law and prescription, of partial endowment and State protection, which are obviously too valuable to be hazarded by the experi- mental reorganization and innovations implied in Mr. Gladstone's Bill, there are, it must be confessed, some serious defects which are occasionally mani- festing themselves, and which nothing but a sound and cautious legislation can adequately supply.
A want of synodical action, for the practical and full development of the Church system, is felt in the West Indies, as it is in England; but I am never- theless of opinion that to give such action here, antecedent to its restoration in England, and consequently without the power of exercising it in concert with the movements of the English Church, would be a perilous experiment, and likely to eventuate in a disunion, if not a disseverment, which I shall never cease to deprecate.
What we do want, is mainly the ability to proceed against an offending incumbent, in case of flagrant immorality, of serious neglect of duty, or gross contumacy, without the intervention of the cumbrous and expensive machinery of Spiritual Courts, as only they could at present be legally constituted, and of so simplifying the ministration of ecclesiastical discipline, that it may be really and faithfully, though not arbitrarily and irresponsibly applied.
It is true that the autocratical power of revoking licences, to which you allude in your speech as too despotic and irresponsible to be properly exercised by the Bishop, docs in certain cases exist; but this power can only be exercised, in accordance with the island law, over such clergy as are not, properly speak- ing, incumbents, and therefore only affects a small number of stipendiary curates and missionaries, who are subordinately and conditionally employed.
E
2
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO