CO885-(2-3) — Page 283

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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41711 C.O.8

.885

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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having become the Church of the State. this ambiguity is removed, the two Judgments are identical. The importance of them, and more especially of that of Long v. Bishop of Cape Town* which expounds the principle of the law, and particularly the importance of the passages to which I have referred in relation to the status of the Plaintiff in the district of Natal, is this:-It shows that the district or colony of Natal is a district pre- sided over by a Bishop of the Church of England, which is properly termed a see or diocese-that the ministers, deacons, and priests officiating within that district, and also all the laymen professing to be members of the Church of England, constitute, not a church in Natal in union and in full communion with the Church of England, but a part of the Church of England itself, and that all the ministers, priests, and deacons there officiating, and all the persons composing the several flocks are members and brethren of the Church of England in the strict sense of the term. The consequence is that they have in all matters ecclesiastical voluntarily sub. mitted themselves to the control of the Bishop of Natal, so long as it is exercised within the scope his authority, according to the principles prescribed by the Church of England.

of

If, however, any sentence of the Bishop of Natal should be contested, recourse must be had to the Courts established by law, which will enforce that sentence if pronounced within the scope of the legai authority of the Bishop, and if he has, in arriving at that sentence, proceeded in a manner consonant with the principles of justice; and in so doing the Court established by law will proceed upon the laws of the Church of England, so far as they are applicable in Natal. In this respect the decision in Long v. Bishop of Cape Town, and that in In re Bishop of Natal,† are identical. And so far from arriving at the conclusion which was pressed upon me in argument in various forms, and which may be stated thus-that these decisions have established, or rather pointed out, that no legal identity exists between the church presided over by the Bishops in colonies with established Legislatures and the United Church of England and Ireland, I have

1 Moo. P. C. (N. S.) 411.

+ 1 Moo. P. C. (N. S.) 411.

3 Moo. P. C. (N. S.) 115.

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arrived at the exactly opposite conclusion--that is,

I have come to the conclusion that, but for these decisions, such identity, though now existing, would very speedily cease to exist.

So long as the law on this subject must, in the final resort, be administered by civil tribunals, according to the laws of the Church of England, to

the extent that such laws are applicable in such colonies, and this with a right of appeal to the Sovereign in Council, it is reasonably certain that the law will be uniformly administered amongst all

the Dependencies of the Crown which possess an established Legislature and have not any religion established by law.

But if each Church is to consider itself a separate

and independent Church, though in union and full communion with the Church of England, and if each Church claims to possess full power to make rules and ordinances for its guidance in each separate colony, and to constitute an ecclesiastical tribunal under the Bishop, and intrust him with full power to enforce such rules and ordinances without any appeal to any tribunal except to the forum domesticum of the Archbishop of Canterbury for the time being, it requires but little foresight to predict that in the course of a very short time, humanly considered, the Colonial Churches, though calling themselves in union and in full communion with the Church of England, would in forms and ordinances, and in matters of Church government, differ widely from each other and from their parent Church. Nor is it too much to say that some alteration of doctrine would probably in many cases follow upon alteration in the discipline and government of the Church.

the

Another consequence may also, I think, be reason- ably predicted to arise from such a state of things, by any one who has carefully observed the disposi

tion of the English people in such matters: if he has done so, he cannot fail to have noticed how deep-rooted an attachment to the Church of England exists in the people generally, even amongst those portions which are not sedulous in attendance at places of public worship-and this consequence is, that as soon as this matter shall have become clearly understood by the English resident in the

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