NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. Wednesday, May 5, 1852.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VIII, Issue 705, 5 May 1852, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND SPECTATOR AND Cook's Strait Guardian. Wednesday, May 5, 1852.

In the numbers of the Sydney Herald recently received is a long and interesting report of a Meeting of the Clergy of the Diocese of Sydney held on the 14th and 15th April in the school room of St. Andrew's Cathedral, to consider the necessary measures to be taken for obtaining a Church Constitution. The meeting was presided over by the Bishop of Sydney and was attended by thirty clergymen, while the proxies of twenty others who were unable to attend were given on the questions submitted to the meetting, and as parochial meetings had previously been held throughout the diocese for the purpose of ascertaining the views of the laity on this important question, the resolutions passed at which were read at the meeting, considerable weight attaches to its proceedings. As the subject of a Church Constitution is occupying the earnest attention of members of the Church of England in New Zealand, and as several meetings have been held in the different settlements with a view to the adoption of the measures necessary to the attainment of this desirable end, any information that can be given as to the proceedings which have taken place in the neighbouring colonies with reference to it will no doubt be considered acceptable by our readers, we therefore intend in this and the following number of the Spectator to reprint the address of the Bishop of Sydney to the Meeting, which occupies about eight columns of the Sydney Herald. The meeting, as we have previously observed, was one of the clergy only, the Bishop having been restrained by conscientious scruples from calling a meeting of the clergy and laity, lest he should be considered as indirectly doing that which by law he feels he is prohibited from doing. In adopting this view it appears to us that his lordship laboured under a misapprehension, inasmuch as the meeting was not called to frame laws which should be binding on the members of the Church of .England throughout the Colony of New South Wales, but simply to state the disabilities they laboured under which they desired to have removed, either by the exercise of the Royal Prerogative or by Act of Parliament as may be deemed most expedient, and to ask for such powers as are necessary for regulating the affairs of the Church and for the management of its internal affairs in the colony, and with this view it was quite as competent for laymen as for clergymen to meet in their individual capacity and consult together on the most desir able course to be adopted. As far as can be gathered from the proceedings published in the Sydney Herald the desire appears to be nearly unanimous in favour of a Church. Constitution in which the laity, as was observed by the Bishop, should "in an elective convention undertake, in conjunction with the Bishop and clergy, that superintendence of the ordinary and current affairs of the Church as to its internal management, which the

ioice ol_ circumstances no longer sutlers the Sovereign, as head of the Church, to administer." At the meeting a good deal of discussion arose on the question whether the clergy and laity should deliberate apart or together, — whether they should meet together in one chamber or separately in two, — but it was ultimately decided by a considerable majority that " the two orders should meet and deliberate together, reserving to each order the right of discussing any question that may come before them, the concurrence of each order being necessary to give validity to any act." Some discussion also took place on the veto to be exercised by the Bishop on the proceedings of the convention. A Memorial to the Queen was adopted by the Meeting- praying for the removal of the disabilities complained of, and for the power cf assembling the clergy and laity together for the better ordering of the affairs of the Church within the diocese. It is very important, as is justly observed by Bishop Broughton, where so many independent local efforts are making at the same time in the dioceses of the different colonies without mutual communication with each other, that the end to be attained should be steadily kept in view. That end is "to administer and support the Church of England according to the old established model, and above all things to maintain our connexion with the mother Church unbroken and inseparable." Where the objects sought for in each colony arc nearly the same, these efforts should be combined in one endeavour to obtain an identity of organization and government, so that the several Churches scattered through the world in the different colonies of the British Empire which " are one in origin, one in language one in acknowledgement of episcopacy, one in doctrine, one in their forms of public worship, and in their use of the same version of scripture " should be included in one common bond of union. This comprehensive view of the question invests it, if possible, with additional interest as it opens to us wider and more extended views,so that while each community labours to obtain the powers necessary for the extension of the church in its separate locality, their separate efforts should not lead to any contrariety of principle but rather that the observation of that Father of the Church should be borne in mind and acted onjwho, as Lord Bacon observes, " noted, that Christ's garment was without seam, and yet the Church's garment was of divers colours, and thereupon setteth down for a rule ; "in veste varietas sit, scissura non sit"

♦ The following is a summary of the last published Government Gazette, dated April 24th : — A proclamation by the Governor appointing a circuit court, under the Supreme Court Ordinance, to be held at Lyttelton on the 15 th April and 15 th October in each j'ear, or as soon after the respective days appointed as conveniently may be ; a proclamation naturalizing Heinrich Edmonstone, under the provisions of the Naturalization Ordinance of the last session; notices referring to Intestate Estates; Auctioneers Licenses, and interest payable on Debentures,. A very interesting table is published of the latitude and longitude, with the times of high water and range of tide, at forty-two places in New Zealand, as determined by the observations of Captain Stokes of H. M. S. Acheron, in the marine survey of the New Zealand Islands. Comparative returns are published for the quarter ending 3 1st March, 1851-2 of arrivals and departures of vessels, and of imports coastwise and exports of New Zealand produce connected with this port; quarterly returns, to 31st March, of immigration and emigration at Wellington, Port Victoria, (Lyttelton) and Otago, and a comparative statement of the revenue and expenditure of the Southerrf Province for the quarter ending 31st December, of the years 1850 and 1851. In the immigration returns, the total number of immigrants to Wellington during the last quarter is 27 J, of emigrants 121, showing an excess of immigration of 150 ; at Lyttelton the excess of immigration during the same period is 39 ; at New Plymouth, 111; at Otago, 3. The total number of immigrants to Canterbury during the year 1851 is 2861. The following is the amount of notes of the Colonial Bank of Issue, in circulation on the 3rd April, being the close of the preceding four weeks : — £5 and upwards ,£920 0 0 Under^s £6840 0 0 .£7760 0 0 A supplement is published to the Gazette containing a list of fifty persons whose claims to land under the New Zealand Company have been reported on by the Commissioner, and who are declared duly entitled to Crown Grants,

A human skeleton was discovered last week by Mr. Whebby's children near the top of Mount Victoria ; the high fern had been lately burnt ofF and the bones were exposed to view. The skeleton had all the appearance of having been there for many years, moss having grown on the skull ; it is supposed to be the skeleton of a maori woman.