PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference :-
C.O.88
885
NEW SOUTH WALES.
No. 37.
Encl. in No. 37.
40
CORRESPONDENCE RELATIVE TO
NEW SOUTH WALES.
No. 37.
Cory of a DESPATCH from Governor the Right Hon. Sir Jous YOUNG, Bart., K.C.B., to the Right Hon. the Earl of CARNARVON.
Government House, Sydney, September 19, 1866. (Received, November 17, 1866,) (Answerel, No. 22, November 30, 1866, page
.)
(No. 61.) MY LORD,
In compliance with the request expressed by the Metropolitan, the Lord Bishop of Sydney, in the letter enclosed, I have the honour to transmit, for your consideration and for such steps as you may deem proper, a communication expressing his opinions on the character and probable effects of the Colonial Church Bill introduced by Mr. Cardwell into the House of Commons.
The Right Hon. the Earl of Carnarvon,
&c.
&c.
&c.
Enclosure in No. 37.
I have, &c.
(Signed)
JOHN YOUNG.
SIR,
Sydney, August 30, 1800. I BEG permission to enclose a letter addressed to Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies, on the subject of Mr. Cardwell's Colonial Church Bill, and respectfully request that your Excellency will be pleased to cause the same to be transmitted to the Secretary of State by the outgoing mail.
I have, &c (Signed) F. SYDNEY.
To his Excellency Sir John Young, K.C.B.
&c.
&c.
&c.
Sydney, August 30, 1866..
MY LORD,
I BEG permission to place before your Lordship the enclosed statement on the character and probable effects of the Colonial Church Bill, introduced by Mr. Cardwell into the House of Commons.
I do not know what has heen the subsequent action of Her Majesty's Government with reference to this subject, and the observations I now send may be inapplicable if Mr. Cardwell's Bill has been withdrawn but as the opinion of the Colonial bishops themselves may possibly be desired, I venture to place mine before you.
The statement has been drawn up by the Chancellor of the diocese, after careful deliberation. I may also add that the question of property is one which Mr. Cardwell's Bill left untouched. This, in case of a surrender of his patent by a future Bishop of Sydney, would, in all probability, form a fruitful subject of litigation.
Above all things, we in this part of Australia deprecate legislation of such a character as would tend to separate the Church in the Colonies from the mother Church at home.
To Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies,
&c.
&c.
REMARKS ON THE COLONIAL BISHOPS BILL
I have, &c. (Signed)
F. SYDNEY.
1. The proposes Bill is a departure from the principle on which the Church of England (ting this term to designate the United Church of England and Ireland) has hitherto acted with regard to the Colonies.
2. This departure is uncalled for by any difficulties which at present attend the carrying out of the principle.
3. This departure will produce results which members of the Church of England ought to use their utmost efforts to prevent.
To these three general headings the following remarks apply:-
I. The principle which the Church of England has hitherto adopted with regard to the Colonies has been to introduce into them branches of herself, so that the clerical and lay members of the Church in any Colony known by the name of the Church of England are as much clerical and lay members of the Church of England as if they were localized in England. By thus acting, the Church of England maintains a principle of unity similar to that which is maintained by, and gives force to, the action of the Church of Rome all over the world.
COLONIAL BISHOPRICS.
41
WALES.
The proposed Bill is an entire departure from this principle. Under it the Church of England will NEW SOUT plant Churches in the Colonies, and each Church when planted may call itself the Church of England; but as to any subsequent practical recognition of oneness, this will depend on whether each individual of the Colonial Church, when claiming to be a member of the Church of England, will be able to stand the test of orthodoxy which that Church requires from those whom she employs in her service. The Third and Fourth Clauses of the Bill show this, for, though their provisions necessarily refer to clerical persons only, yet the principle involved is general, and its application to the particular cases shows what is really involved in it.
And further, the fact that these provisions are not merely rules of ecclesiastical practice, but are contained in an Act of the Legislature, fix a distinctive character on the status of Colonial Churches, which time will rather bring out more sharply than have a tendency to weaken or obliterate. The clergy of the Church of England in England, and of the same Church in the Colonies, will stand to each other in a position not very dissimilar to that in which members of the English and Colonial bars stand to each other. A member of a Colonial bar coming to England does not cease to be a barrister, but, so far as any power to exercise the duties of his profession is concerned, he is not a barrister until he submits himself to auch tests of fitness to be a member of the English bar as the rules of the English profession prescribe. The same disability follows the members of the English bar when proceeding to a Colony, and the relations of members of different Colonial bars inter se stand on the same footing. The object of these rules is to keep the different bars distinct from each other, and they have that effect. The same effect with regard to the Church will be produced by the clauses of the Bill to which reference has been made. Union has hitherto been the principle acted on by the Church of England in reference to Colonial Churches: separation is the principle on which the Bill is founded.
II. That the Crown cannot by Letters Patent confer coercive legal jurisdiction on a bishop, or even
a status which the Colonial Courts are bound, apart from other circumstances, to recognize, las little to do with the maintenance of the principle of union on which the Church of England has hitherto acted. All that is really necessary to the maintenance of the principle is that the Church of England should, in reference to Colonial Churches, retain in her own hands the creation of the episcopal status as the foundation of a Colonial Church; and that the Crown, as temporal head of the Church of England, should sanction, and as far as its prerogative avails, confifni and strengthen that status. Any effect beyond this may, or rather must, depend either on special Colonial legislation, or more generally on the acceptance by individuals of positions in the Church dependent on a recognition of the episcopal status, thus giving rise to those obligations of contract to the observance of which all temporal courts will lend their aid.
If required for the purpose thus indicated, an Act of the Imperial Parliament might be passed expressly enabling the Crown, by Letters Patent or otherwise, to designate bishops for consecration as Colonial bishops, and to limit the territory within which the episcopal functions of such bishop should be exercised, and providing that any bishop thus created should be bound, subject of course to any Colonial legislation to the contrary, to exercise such powers as an English bishop would exercise, and in all respects to use his authority according to the ecclesiastical laws of the Church of England, the decisions of the bishop upon others being subject to the same appeal, and bis own conduct being subject to the same control and censures, as the decisions and conduct of any English bishop. Such action as this on the part of the Crown nced no more interfore with Colonial laws than the appointment of a colonial agent or attorney by an English trading company, and all the difficulties and complications of the Cape Town litigation might in future be avoided. The prerogative of the Crown might usefully be exercised in making the bishops corporations, and this corporate status thus created would be recognized by Colonial courts just as the status of foreign corporations is now recognized.
How a Colonial Church thus planted would work may be easily explained. The bishop would be a bishop of the Church of England, he would be accepted as such by Colonial clergy and laity; and into all dealings with him by either would be imported as items of contract all those consequences attaching to his character which have been before mentioned. The clergyman would take his licence, and the layman would deal officially with Church property under a contract that in everything the laws of the Church of England were the terms of their engagement, and these laws would be invoked by cach party as binding on the other, and would be enforceable in the temporal courts. Thus a disobedient presbyter would be deprived of his licence by the bishop, and if he resisted, the temporal court would, prima facie, aid the bishop, not indeed an caring about ecclesiastical discipline as between bishop and presbyter, but simply as enforcing a contract between man and man. The presbyter in his turn, would protect himself by such appeal to a higher ecclesiastical authority as the laws of the Church of England gave, and would safely invoke the aid of the temporal court to preserve him harmless until the result of his appeal was known. Recollecting then that legislation in this matter is to provide for the future, not to remedy the past, it may be confidently stated that the proposed change is uncalled for by the position of the Colonial Church.
III. The results of the proposed change are obvious-
1. The Colonial Churebieg Widl be gradually separated from the Church of England and from each other. The comprehensive nature of the Churen of England, which unites men of different views within her pale in England, will be the cause of separation in the Colonies. Our Colonial Churck, A, will gradually move off in one direction, another, B, in the opposite direction, and in a short time there will be as little common ground between A and B as there is between the Church of England and the various bodies which have separated from her; and the idea partakes of the ludicrous, that the presbyters of these two Churches shall even find themselves symbolizing in common in order to obtain recognition in au English diocese as presbyters of the Church of England.
2. Even in the same Colony different Churches may in a very little time be formed, each calling itself the Church of England, the presbyters of each equally claiming to be members of the Church of England by an assumed readiness to symbolize with that Church if required to do so.
An example
of this will immediately arise in the case of the diocese of Natal. There two rival Churches will exist, one under the present bishop, the other under a new bishop which the proposed Bill will call F
3 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON |
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC-
COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO