English Government that first properly stimulated English piety, and this in turn the energy of our Colonists to carry on this great work, which has thus, in fact, grown out of independence and religious self-action. But while thankful for this amount of success, it does not become us either to boast or to grow secure. So rapid a growth requires great watchfulness and caution, lest we should carry over to the Colonies the imperfections of our own system, through a lazy unwillingness to discriminate, or a blind affection for all that is established.

Laws cannot be considered nakedly, apart from the system on which they are engrafted, or the habits, customs, and prepossessions of those subject to them. To transplant a certain portion of our laws, without modification, into another country, is to put new cloth on an old garment. The result will often be different from what was intended, and we shall fail to obtain the assimilation and harmony of one system. Neither can we afford to rest on that antiquarian conservatism which ignores the present, and all foresight for the future, and slowly but surely makes evils into precedents. We must look facts in the face, and see what new things are wanted, what principles are good and suitable, what bad and to be rejected, and what local action is to be encouraged, and lastly, what natural tendencies there may be which we may take hold of and use; just as a parent does not strive to impart an artificial nature to his child, but sets himself to the more feasible, but much less ostentatious task, of strengthening or discouraging the different tendencies he observes in him.

In what I may have to trouble you with concerning the Colonial Church, I wish to be understood as making no accusations; that is not the proper function of your Journal, nor consistent with your wish and design-which is to encourage rather than to blame, and to promote that sympathy between Churchmen here and in the Colonies, which cannot fail to strengthen and improve both us and them. If in this spirit I am somewhat free-spoken, I can only hope, as I intend, to give no offence.

I propose, then, first, to glance at certain points of the state of the Church in the Colonies, and their corresponding dangers; and, secondly, to suggest, in a future letter, what appears to be a remedy for as many of them as we can hope to cure—in fact, a proper and satisfactory system of Church legislation.

The great difference between a closely packed and permanent state of society like our own, and a new one, thinly scattered over the country, where discordant elements have to settle down as they may, is obvious at first sight. The latter state, perhaps, affords more opportunities, but greater discouragements also. With us the clergy are allowed a kind of precedence over dissenting ministers, which their social position and education generally warrant.. The pretensions of the Church are no novelty, and they are partly modified by circumstances, partly submitted to as matter of custom, with all the willingness with which Englishmen in general submit to that authority. But perhaps the most important reasons for submission are, that the great majority of the more educated and influential classes

belong to it, and pay a decent attention to its services; and that though dissenters are numerous, no one form of dissent has any pretension to compare its numbers with those of the Church.

But, when it is remembered, that both among the more prosperous emigrants, and their children, there is far less of intellectual culture than in the same classes here; that the different bodies of dissent are stronger there, and that party spirit is the bane of Colonies, it is not to be wondered at, that the differences between Church and dissent are far more bitter than here, and break over all bounds of moderation. It follows, I think, from these very different relations with dissent, that particular care should be taken to prevent anything from being done by Churchmen that might seem to imply the desire of acquiring power over others, or of making the Church dominant. No one in a free country ought to complain that the most active, zealous and pious religionists make converts from among other bodies, so long as they confine themselves to persuasion merely; but it is not consistent with freedom, that any extraneous power or influence, far less any compulsion, should be employed for this purpose.

But I would rather direct attention to the internal affairs of the Church. Notwithstanding the multiplication of Clergy and Bishops, it is obvious that they must be few and far between, and that each must be left much to himself, without those opportunities for mutual counsel under difficulties which a walk to the next parish affords here.

Those who are in the whirl of active duties, with the performance of which on the whole their consciences are reasonably satisfied, are particularly apt to undervalue great and permanent principles, and are tempted to act (to use a vulgar expression) by the rule of thumb. Their own goodness, sense, and sagacity serve for the moment; and they forget how great at all times, but especially in the formation of a new society, is the importance of an early adoption of right principles, which is like folding the sheet from the very first in the right way, a folding which it never loses.

Doubtless they generally take the right course of themselves, but as it happens to them not unfrequently to observe that others who have more learning, have not tact or zeal, and therefore with much greater advantages succeed much worse than themselves, they mistake the reason of the failure, and undervalue system and learning altogether.

Mutual conference could hardly fail to correct this tendency, because it would bring the knowledge of the intelligent and the zeal of the devoted to combine and strengthen each other; but so long as the Clergy are isolated, there is but too much to tempt each to follow his own course, and each to think it the best possible, while he is by the misfortune of his position cut off from improvement.

To provide against all the evils of want of system, and to remedy relaxed discipline, the Colonial Church has hitherto had but one measure, and that certainly a most effective one,-the establishment of new Bishoprics. It is not to be wondered at, that a most marked improvement (perhaps on the whole the most remarkable one of our

day) has followed, that the Church has taken a new life, the ministry been extended, and the people warned.

But as in human affairs there is always evil mixed up with good, so the very extension of what is good brings evils in its train, and difficulties for us to cope with. The Clergy cannot be extended in numbers, and the laity made to think on religious matters, without a danger of party spirit-a danger perhaps increased by the latitude our Church professes to allow to private judgment, and by our national tendency to bow rather to right than to authority.

There arises at once a danger of a Bishop's party and an opposition, a High Church and a Low Church party; and this is much increased by the tendency of the human mind to meet error with an exaggeration of the truth denied, rather than by that golden mean which excitement misses, and quietness alone can arrive at, and which not unfrequently coldness reaches before zeal. Any doubt, therefore, as to the extent of the Bishop's authority, or any disposition to act without him, will thus be met by an exaggeration of the old rule of doing "nothing without the Bishop," of which we have here no notion ; and this again begets its recoil, until there is danger that the pungent saying of Bishop Broughton's rebellious deacon may become true, that the Clergy are divided between the sycophants and the opponents of their Bishop.

Questions of discipline will arise, for which there is no certain provision. In former times the latent misconduct of an isolated Clergyman, after he had ruined the interests of the Church in his neighbourhood, might be made known to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and he be removed from its list; but now this will be a case for the Bishop to deal with, and, as is right, he will be called on to act at an earlier stage, when correction may be of use, or the fact be less certain. But what is he to do? His power of withdrawing the licence, if he does thus without assigning a reason, none can challenge; but this is a course of so arbitrary a character, that it cannot be generally adopted. It is not to be wondered at, nor much to be regretted, though it is truly an unpleasant feature, that the Clergy of a diocese, almost as distant as any from this country, should have maintained the family of one of their brethren, while he came to prosecute an appeal at Lambeth; not, I fear, from any peculiar desert of his, but because his danger was theirs. There was a remarkable expression attributed to Bishop Selwyn, in a recent report in the newspapers of the proceedings of the Canterbury Association, that he hoped to be able to make arrangements for divesting himself of his present absolute power. No one, who knows the Bishop of New Zealand, could suppose that he would give up anything properly belonging to his Episcopal authority. Circumstances have, however, made that authority practically absolute in the Colonies. Absolute power is a perilous thing, and a good man armed with it fears to use it. I believe the Episcopal authority would really be more effective if it were in each case restrained by the superior authority of a synod, and if in dealing with the Clergy, or with discipline generally, it took care to

carry with it, on all questions of fact, the assent of those who are themselves interested in the maintenance of discipline, and whose personal rights depend on its being exercised discreetly.

But who is sufficient for these things? As they stand at present, no sagacity on the part of a Bishop can secure him from misapprehension; vigour is wanted, yet it disgusts all to whom it is inconvenient. The more faithfully he does his duty, and the more the Church extends and prospers under his hands, the greater the difficulties become; and the consequent temptation to leave the more urgent and difficult questions alone, and to content himself with a sort of lazy show of activity, doing no more than is just necessary, leaving questions to settle themselves, and parties to fight out their own battles, and the Society at home to find out and redress as it can any malappropriation of its funds which must occasionally happen from the distance and variety of the places to which they are distributed.

In saying this, I mean to cast no censure on any of the Colonial Bishops; taken as a body, they are admirable men, and have shown vigour, fearlessness and tact that are above all praise. Neither do I blame their people, who have, on the whole, received them with an openhearted kindness that has been most gratifying; and not shown the disposition that might have been expected to carp at their authority or their acts. I presume only to blame the system, or rather want of system, that exists. It cannot but be, that a man placed in an exalted office, and with considerable funds at his disposal, and, therefore, great power, will have plots formed against him by the cunning and malicious. The change of policy also, which the multiplication of Dioceses demands of the Gospel Propagation Society, will add to the difficulties of the Bishops. In former times, when the Colonial Clergy were few in number, each had his stipend, and the whole number sent out from home could not be very much larger than the finances of the Society would warrant. Each Missionary had then, as he conceived, his income for life, and was contented; now, however, that the number of the Clergy is so greatly multiplied, it has become necessary to make a bye-law, that each stipend shall in ordinary cases be given only for five years; and it is to be hoped that the time is not far distant when the Society may give its charity not by individuals, but by dioceses; not in stipends, but in grants; dependent, of course, on what the English Church may place at its disposal, but based on a comprehensive view of the wants of each Diocese, and the amount of local helpfulness which each Bishop may be able to report, and distributed, not by the Society itself,-necessarily ignorant and liable to be misinformed of local circumstances,-but by a local authority, to the most pressing and beneficial local objects. Nothing can be more unsafe, than that the Society should exercise any thing like jurisdiction. Principle and expediency alike demand, that it should nourish, not dependencies of its own, but daughter Churches, each complete in its own laws and discipline-most valuable supports to our own Church in her troubles, but ready and fit to act alone, and still preserve with us essential unity, if any painful dispensation of Providence

should separate us politically. But, however excellent this new mode of distributing the charity of the English Church may be in theory, it is plain, that if it depends on one man-however excellent and exalted-in each locality, it will not work. For it will only add the temptation of self-interest to all the others we have glanced at, which tend to clog the wheels of the ecclesiastical machine. And but too many may be expected to bring flattery or fear to bear on the unfortunate depositary of all this wealth. But once let the matter take this shape, that the Bishop calls his people together and tells them that for this year the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel can give him only so much, and puts it to them: How can we best dispose of this grant? What shall I report to the Society? How shall I show, not merely that every shilling of the last grant has been paid to some one, but that it has been paid to the man and the place that most wanted it, and where most good may be done? What shall I do with the grant for the current year? What new places demand a share of it? Where can improvement be made?-- the replies of such an assembly would exclude jobbing. No man would dare to attempt it; for the rest of the clergy, (and if they failed, the laity) would put a stop to the outrage.

A good and cautious Bishop would find in such a meeting as this the best support for his own previously arranged designs, and he would know how to elicit from it opinions which no one would dare complain of, but which, if he had uttered them himself, in the first instance, would have exposed him to private animosity, to cabals, and very likely to general unpopularity.

By the aid of such a meeting, also, he would secure harmony between the laity and the clergy, using the one body against the other whenever any unpleasant feeling showed itself; and arming himself with the concurrence of both against any individual or vestry that might need coercion. With regard to the laity in particular, there is not a more valuable practical principle of Church government than the importance of securing their general assent, and making use of the educated and right-minded of them, who have influence each in his own locality, to act as a body against the less intelligent persons, not unfrequently almost dissenters, who delight to trouble a vestry.

I apprehend that it is practically impossible in these times to maintain discipline, or to exclude from the communion of the Church those who are not fairly members of it, either on account of heresy or evil life, unless the laity are made to combine in some orderly way in the legislative arrangements. It will not be forgotten that the attempt has been to a great degree given up here, and that even measures have been laid before Parliament under very high sanction, which provided for the improvement of "Church discipline" while the scope of them regarded the Clergy alone. Happily, this scandal is remedied. But still, the fear of priestly tyranny will effectually prevent anything being done by the Clergy only; and Parliament, if it could be trusted, would do nothing, from jealousy and want of time. In America where the laity are not represented by either mobs or parliaments of