CO885(2-3) — Page 33

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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• 885

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CONFIDENTIAL.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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885

2 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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Asiellamcor

M. XLIV

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Sir,

The Bishop of Melbourne to the Right Hon. H. Labouchere.

18, Chester Terrace, Regent's Park, December 12, 1855.

IN the accompanying Memorial I have stated the grounds upon which 1 regard the confirmation of the Act of the Victoria Legislature as of the greatest importance to the permanent welfare of the Church of England in that province; and upon which I would venture most earnestly to beg of Her Majesty's Government that they would advise, and take such steps as may be requisite for enabling Her Majesty. to give her assent to the Act.

I am sure that you will give this Memorial your careful consideration, and I trust that its statements and reasoning will produce in your mind the convic- tion, which I myself so strongly feel, of the justice of

our cause.

You will observe that the Act does not interfere with any prerogative which the Queen now exercises as head of the church in the Province of Victoria ; nor invests the proposed Church Assembly with any "legislative" powers which would at all affect the relation of the Church in Victoria to the Church in England. And I would take this opportunity of stating, that so far are the members of the Church in diocese from desiring to become independent

my of the Church at home, that at the recent conference

of 1854, as well as that of 1851, the feeling both of the clergy and laity was most strongly expressed upon the importance of maintaining the union between them in the most perfect integrity. We should unanimously deprecate any measure which would make a clergyman in Victoria feel that he was not as fully a clergyman of the United Church of England and Ireland there, as he was before he left his natiye land. We most earnestly wish that

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