CO885-(2-3) — Page 41

CONFIDENTIAL.

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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

C.O.

Reference →

885

2

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

To the Right Honourable Henry Labouehere, Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for Colonial

Affairs.

The Memorial of the Right Reverend Charles, Lord Bishop of Melbourne,

Sheweth,

THAT your memorialist desires to call the atten. tion of Her Majesty's Government to the subject of a Bill passed in the year 1854, by the Legislative Council of the Colony of Victoria, entitled "An Act to enable the Bishops, Clergy, and Laity of the United Church of England and Ireland in Victoria, to provide for the regulation of the affairs of the said Church," which Bill has been reserved by his Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Charles Hotham, for Her Majesty's approval, and is now under the consideration of Her Majesty's Govern- ment,

That your memorialist respectfully requests that Her Majesty's Government will advise Her Majesty to give Her assent to this Bill.

That your memorialist is aware that the Bill may be considered open to the objection that, in proposing to constitute an Elective General Assembly of cleri- cal and lay deputies, to be assembled from time to time for the management (though within carefully prescribed limits) of the affairs of the Church, it interferes with the ecclesiastical supremacy of the Crown within the Colony; and to ask the Govern- ment to advise Her Majesty to relinquish this supre- macy to the extent involved in Her giving Her assent to the Bill may seem presumptuous; it is certainly

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