BISHOP SUTER IN ENGLAND.

Evening Star, Issue 3282, 27 August 1873, Page 3

BISHOP SUTER IN ENGLAND.

The Bishop of Nelson is now at Home, and has already made the fact known. He holds as pronounced opinions as ever, and will do the Celony a great deal of good by his truthful and at the same time favorable report of its condition. His speech at the annual meeting of the Colonial and Continental Church Society was a very able effort of its kind, and he placed before his audience a view of the condition of the Colony which I am convinced was new to them. He said amongst other things that before going out to New Zealand he had no conception of the vast progress made by all tho Colonies in civilisation. This was hardly to be wondered at, for since my arrival here 1 have been asked tho most extraordinary questions as to the manners and customs of the good people of Auckland, and the ordinary prevailing notion appears to be that you live in wigwams, clothe in frieze, and eat like cannibals. The notion of the ‘ bush ” has been so written and dinned into the Eng’ish mind that a notion prevails that being in the Colonies and in the bush is synonymous. On this ground it is that uninformed persons excuse tho monstrous ignorance of the Wagga Wagga Tichborne. 1 hey imagine that having been some years in the Colonies he has been for so long cut off from all ameliorating and civilising influences that he has forgotten everything he ever knew. B everting to Bishop Suter’s speech, he said also, “ Persons in England sometimes speak as if the colonists would put up with ministers who would not do for this country. Now remember what Samuel Pepys said when Dr Bates and other eminent men were turned out of the church in his day. He said, ‘I hope the (Government will send us good men, for bad men will not go down in the city. Bead Colony for city, aua that is true at the present time. ” He went on to discourage the idea of people of bad character emigrating in the hope that their antecedents would not be known in the Colony, saying that quite the contrary was always the case. He also showed what a mistake was the sending out of yonug men who were rather fast, saying that “wildcats produced a much larger crop in the Colonies than heie,” He also showed how it was that the clergy in the Colonies were obliged to look to the society in question for assistance. It was, he said, in consequence of the rapid change of population which was continually taking place in all Colonial towns which occasioned parishioners to be strangers to the long and laborious services of their pastors, and so they were not willing to supply funds as they would be had they been permanent residents. After eulogising the Church Missionary Society and the work effected by it in the Colony, which some of us colonists may perhaps not quite believe in, the Bishop said he regretted to say “ that some of the men who had been sent out as ministers (not by the Society) having previously had a most excellent character, had appeared to change that character on the seas. ” —Auckland Star's Loudon correspondent.