PUBLIC RECOR
OFFICE
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PUBLIC.O.885
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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provide funds for the endowment of Colonial sees I was co-operating with the Archbishops and Bishops of the United Church of England and Ireland in laying the foundation of ellicient Church govern- ment for the members of our National Church resident ip the respective Colonies, and that the Crown, by its Letters-Patent, had power to give legal effect to an order of things calculated to secure that the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, by law established, should be maintained in their completeness amongst the congregations of our own communion in those Colonies. Without this security I should not have guaranteed the endowment funds, and upon the faith of this having been accomplished by the issuing of Her Majesty's Letters-Patent, I fulfilled in each case my guarantee.
The declaratiou, however, of the state of the Jaw, which is to be found in the Report of the Judicial Committee of Her Majesty's Privy Council upon the case of the Bishops of Cape Town and Natal, has drawn my attention more particularly to the fact that the conditions upon which I undertook to make provisions for the endowment of a Bishop's see at Cape Town have not been fulfilled by Her Majesty's Letters-Patent, and I find, with much pain- ful surprise, that the Bishop nominated to the see of Cape Town is declared in that Report not to have any effective Ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and my anxiety is increased by the advice which I have received from eminent counsel, that the Letters-Patent of the Crown, purporting to erect the sees of Adelaide, and British Columbia, and Vancouver's Island, with jurisdiction over the clergy in those Colonies may prove to be equally ineffectual with the Letters- Patent of Cape Town."* ·
It will be seen by the observatious I have already made, that, in my opinion, this letter is written in misapprehension of the real effect of the decisions of the Judicial Committee in the two cases referred tor. The writer observes that she would not have guaranteed the funds unless upon the faith that the
Iumetiately after the Judgment was delivered, Miss Burdett Coutts wrote to inform the Master of the Rolls that she was not one of the subscribers to the Natal Fund, and that she had taken
no part whatever in the opposition to the payment of the salary of the Buhop of Natal,
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Crown, by its Letters-Patent, had power to give legal effect to an order of things calculated to secure that the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, by law established, should be main- tained in their completeness amongst the congrega- tions of our own communion in these Colonies.
If I am right in the observations I have made upon the effect of the decisions of the Privy Council, this object will be far better accomplished
by securing an uniform administration of the same law throughout all the Colonies, instead of founding separate and independent churches, each framing its own rules of discipline.
Afterwards the writer finds, with the most painful surprise, that the Bishop nominated to the see of Cape Town is declared not to have an Ecclesiastical jurisdiction. This, again, appears to me to spring
from a misapprehension. It is not declared by the Judgment of the Privy Council that the Bishop of Cape Town has no effective ecclesiastical jurisdic- tion, unless in the word "effective" is included the word "irresponsible." The Judgment of the Privy Council has declared, in the case of Mr. Long, that the Bishop of Cape Town has an effective Eccle- siastical jurisdiction, provided it be administered in accordance with the doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, and in a manner consonant with the principles of justice; that if it be so admi- nistered it will be enforced and carried into execu- tion by the power of the civil tribunals, but that if it be not so administered it is a nullity; and that whether it be or be not so administered is a question to be determined by the civil tribunals of the colony, with an ultimate appeal to the Sovereign in Council. If, indeed the persons who contributed these funds did so on the faith that the decision of the Bishop in the colony, or of the Archbishop of Canterbury, on an appeal to him in his domestic tribunal, should be final, and further, that that decision should not be questioned in any Court of justice, not even in the Court of Arches, the Eccle- siastical Court of the Archbishop, but which is presided over by a layman, and from whose deci- sions an appeal lies to the Queen in Council, then unquestionably this object is not accomplished by the Letters-Patent: but there is not anything that I can find in the previous correspondence, or in these