PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
TTTC.O.885
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
6
2. On the same assumption, the Local Acts which, in several Colonies, have authorised Diocesan Bishops, Clergy, and Laity, to pass regulations of various kinds-under which regulations ministerial acts have been performed and salaries paid and spent, would seem never to have received any legal execution. For these regulations have been in fact passed, not by the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of any diocese, but by certain Clergy and Laity, erro- neously assumed to be the Clergy and Laity of that supposed diocese, and by a person erroneously pre- tending to the character of a Diocesan Bishop. The same doubt extends, of course, to Provincial as well as Diocesan Assemblies.
3. In any case where these reputed Bishoprics have been endowed it would seem
more than
doubtful whether the proceeds of such endowments have been or can be legally paid to the reputed diocesans.
1 4. Even in case it be held that the illegal appointment of each diocesan has created a lay Corporation under the title of "Bishop (say) of of Quebec," which Corporation, though having no Ecclesiastical connection with the local diocese of Quebec, would be a sufficient object of the intended endowment, and of the Colonial laws referring to such corporation; yet it would remain to determine the mode by which this Corporation should be now kept alive. For the Crown would probably decline to appoint a successor to the present Bishop on the present illegal basis, and it is not clear how a legal successor could be appointed otherwise.
These being the inconveniences which may be anticipated from the Judgment, it follows to con- sider what ought to be done, if anything, to remove them.
But it is material, first, to show that the present confusion is not due to any carelessness or want of forethought either in the authorities of the Church or in those who prepared the Letters-Patent.
The supposition thrown out by the Lords of the Judicial Committee is, that the clauses of Colonial Letters-Patent which give jurisdiction were inadver- tently taken by the official persons who prepared. them from the forms used in founding the Eust Indian Bishoprics. Their true history appears in the annexed paper.
7
It will be seen that in 1787 and 1793 (the first of these dates being twenty-nine years before the foundation of the first East Indian diocese), Bishoprics were founded in Colonies possessing representative institutions, with ecclesiastical jurisdiction and coercion (in clerum), with power of suspension aud deprivation, and with power of examining witnesses on oath. These Bishoprics were lawfully founded, and the powers lawfully given in the opinion of the Committee of Council which considered the case in 1787, as also of Sir W. Wynn, Lord Alvanly, Sir Annexure 1, pp. 14, A. Macdonald, Lord Eldon, Lord Redesdale, and 15, 16.
Lord Stowell, by whom they were considered, appa- rently, not as a matter of mere form, but with the attention due to a new and important project.
시
/3
19.
These Bishoprics were lawfully founded, and some Episcopal jurisdiction at least lawfully given in the opinion of the Parliament of 32 Geo. III (cap. 31, sec. 40), and of the Parliament of 59 Geo. III (cap. 60, secs. 3, 4).
That His Majesty had the power to create
Anuexure 1, pp. 18, Diocesan Bishops in India was the opinion of the Parliament of 5 Geo. III (cap. 155, sec. 49), who however seemed to have entertained, or at least thought it wise to obviate two doubts; first (sec. 51), whether a Bishop lawfully consecrated might not have some jurisdiction independently of His Majesty's Letters-Patent; secondly (sec. 52), whether His Majesty could under the circumstances give juris- diction by Letters-Patent.
The same views appear to have been entertained by the Parliament of 3 and 4 Geo. IV (cap. 85, sec. 69).
The case of India, however, to which these two last Acts relate, is not so closely relevant to the present question as that of the West Indian Colonies, in most of which representative institutions had been established long before the Bishoprics of Jamaica and Barbadoes were founded in 1824.
The Parliament of 6 G.o. IV (cap. 88, preamble), was of opinion in 1825 that the Crown not only had
Annexure 1. p. 19. the right to establish, but had actually established these Dioceses, and recited the Letters-Patent which gave jurisdiction to the Bishops, without any expres- sion of doubt as to their entire legality.
It was not till the year 1847, when public and professional opinion respecting the rights of Colonial