PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE
Reference
TLC.O. 885
PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON
ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO
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legal or popular sense of the word. All clergy so ordained, who have received preferment here or in the Colonies, are wrongly in possession of that preferment, and all their ministrations (including possibly the celebration of marriages) have been illegal.
The object of the present Bill is to give retro- spective validity to the various acts of which the invalidity has thus been discovered, and to place the Colonial Church on a fair and convenient footing for the future.
The clauses of the Act which are mainly retro- spective are Sections 1, 2, 3, and 13.
1. With regard to the status of the existing Colonial Bishops within their dioceses, Clauses 1,
2, and 3, provide that Episcopal Letters-Patent already issued shall be valid in so far as they purport to give a corporate character and title, and that the acts done by a Bishop in his Episcopal character shall be valid, if they were such as might have been rendered valid by the voluntary consent of those who have in fact submitted, or may submit, to such acts.
2. With regard to the status and ministrations of colonially ordained clergy, Clause 13 gives validity to all the acts and appointments which would be invalidated by this joint operation of the Natal and Cape Town judgments, and the Act of 59 Geo. III, cap. 60.
The prospective clauses are Sections 4, 5, 6, and 8, 9, 10, 11, 12.
With regard to the future status of a Colonial Bishop in his diocese Clauses 4, 5, and 6 provide—
1. That Bishops who are to exercise their func- tions beyond the limits of the United Kingdom may be consecrated without Letters-Patent or other Royal Mandate.
2. That Colonial Bishops may surrender their existing Letters-Patent.
3. That in Colonies where there are no Eccle-
siastical Courts the relation of Anglican Bishops to their clergy and laity is to be cognizable by the ordinary Colonial Courts, just as the internal rela- tions of any other communion are cognizable.
It will, therefore, become possible for Her Majesty
to decline the issue of any more Letters-Patent, or the adoption of any responsibility in the appointment of Colonial Bishops, without thereby preventing members of the English Church from constituting themselves into Colonial Dioceses.
And this refusal may be found convenient at once
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in the Australian, North American, and South African Colonies, where the Church is neither established nor paid by the State, except by way of subsidy in common with other denominations, Such a refusal will probably result in a speedy sur- render of Letters-Patent, but, if not, will reduce them to abeyance as the Bishops die or resign; and this surrender or abeyance, when it occurs, will have the effect of absolutely disjoining the Colonial Episcopal Church from the Government of this country, and placing it legally on the same footing
in the respective Colonies as the Roman Catholic or any other persuasion.
With regard to the future status and ministra- tions in the United Kingdom of Clergy ordained by Colonial Bishops, sections 8 and 9 provide that' these and all other Clergymen ordained otherwise than by English or Irish Diocesans shall, like the Scottish Episcopal Clergy (27 and 28 Vict., cap. 94), be unable to otheiate or receive preferment in au English or frish Diocese without consent of the Diocesan.
Clauses 10, 11, and 15 (re-enacting, in fact, 15 and 16 Vict., cap. 52, merely provide that the above disqualification shall not extend to persons ordained
by a Colonial or other Bishop acting ministerially in an English or Irish Diocese under Commission from an English or Irish Diocesan.
Clause 7 repeals existing statutes.
February 19, 1866.
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F. R.