CO885(2-3) — Page 30

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111

Miscellaneous

A XLIII

CONFIDENTIAL

Mr. Merivale,

1. THE course which you propose with regard to the "Victoria Church Act" will, if Parliament will consent to it, settle, for the present, the ques- tion of enabling the clergy and laity of the Church of England in Canada to meet in Synod, and make rules and regulations respecting the affairs of the Churchi.

2. Ought the Synod to have the power to proceed to the election of their own Bishops? Do the nuem- bers of the Church of England in Canada strongly desire to possess this power? Do they make the obtaining it the condition of their providing stipends for their Bishops ? Sir F. Head thinks that "it will· not be easy to obtain from the people of the Colony the contributions necessary to endow the new dioceses required, unless some such power of nomi- nation be conceded by the Crown." If so, the argument in favour of conceding it, founded upon the fact of the separation of the Church of England from the State in Canada by the secularization of the Clergy Reserves, appears to me irresistible. What ever objections on the score of interfering with the prerogative or with the supremacy of the Crown may be urged against such concession-objections the force of which I do not understand-they seem to me phantasms engendered by the memory of the past, without substance at present. For what danger or harm could result to the British Commonwealth from the Imperial Parliament passing an Act to empower a Canadian Synod to provide for the elec- tion of Canadian Bishops, giving to the Bishops so elected all the powers and jurisdiction possessed by ordinary Bishops; that is, an Act to put the Church of England in Canada on a similar footing to the Church of England in the United States? The Law Officers of the Crown assert that there are almost insuperable objections to introducing a Bill

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