CHURCH GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONIES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume II, Issue 92, 9 October 1852, Page 4

CHURCH GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONIES.

On the order of the day for the second reading of the Colonial Bishops Bill, Mr. Gladstone made a statement of the evil which he considers to require legislative remedy, and of the principle which has guided him in framing the present measure to accomplish that remedy. The evil is, that the Episcopalian communities in the colonies are in truth not on an equality with the other religious communities in the colonies; their relation to the established Chuii-h of the mother-country deprives them of power to organize their own internal rule and discipline in the same independent and effective manner which the other religious communities of the Colonies can use; while the limitation of our ecclesiastical system to the area of the mother-country balks them of the advantages possessed by the community of the established Church at home. There are no such things in the colonies as legal eclesiastical courts ; and it would be absurd, as well as politically impossible, to introduce them there. The Bishop of Tasmania examined his letters-patent to see if he could introduce them ; he found that by the terms of his letters-patent he could do so ; but the Dissenters of Tasmania thereupon examined the letters-patent in their turn, and they exposed the legal fact that the Queen's prerogative did not entitle her to confer those powers, and that consequently the letters-patent were illegal. The grievances felt are so practical that all the Episcopalian communities of the Australian and American colonies have publicly demanded a remedy for them; and in every instance, except possibly one, every sort of Parliamentary remedy, whether to be applied by the Imperial Parliament or by the Local Legislatures, has been repudiated, and the power of self-government by internal organization in the communities themselves has been claimed. The only exception is Tasmania, where the great majority of the community is attached -to the English Church, and where possibly the Local Legislaturemight.be willing and able to provide a Parliamentary remedy suitable for the particular case of that colony. The principle which Mr. Gladstone has endeavoured to carry out in his remedy, is that which he hoped would daily gain strength, favour, and currency in this country —that of leaving the colonies (subject to any restraints needful on Imperial grounds) to the' uncontrolled management of their own local affairs, whether it was for ecclesiastical or civil purposes. (Cheers.) For he would frankly state in the face of the House of Commons, that if any man offered him, for the Church of England in the colonies, the boon of civil preference, he would reject that boon as a fatal gift; convinced that any such preference would be nothing but a source of weakness to the Church itself, and of difficulty and of discord to the colonial communities, in the soil of which he wished to see her take a free, strong, and healthy root. Mr. Gladstone elaborately justified the application of this principle to the ecclesiastical concerns of the Colonies ; and at the same time impressed on the House that he had taken the utmost precaution not to trench upon the political rights of the Imperial or the Colonial authorities. Of the framework of his measure he said little more than that it includes a schedule of colonies to which it may be applied, and will give the Crown power to add other colonies by order in Council.

Sir John Pakington, Colonial Minister, said that he should feel it necessary to go fully into the subject—which the approaching hour of six o'clock prevented him from doing on Wednesday ; and, on his motion, the debate was adjourned till the 19th of May.— Spectator.