EXTRACTS. BISHOPS IN THE COLONIES.

New Zealander, Volume 8, Issue 603, 24 January 1852, Page 2

EXTRACTS. BISHOPS IN THE COLONIES.

In tlic course of the debate in the House of Lords on the third reading of the Ecclesiastical Titles' 13111, the subject of titles and rank grunted to Bishops in the Colonies incidentally came under discussion. We extract from the report in the Times the portion of the debate referring to this question. The Bishop of Oxfokd said— An amendment had also been proposed elsewhere, which he considered ought to have been adopted, in order to rendei the bill a thoiougbly honest and selfconsistent and effective measure; Tho piovision, namely, which declared that the Sovereign of England being the sole fountain of honour within her dominions, any Minister of the Crown who should, without tho express sign manual, assign lankand precedence to any Itouian Catholio prelate within the dominions of the Crovn, in respect of titles mprely derived from tho Bishop of Kome, should be deemed guilty of a grave penal offence. (Hear, hear.; It implied a contradiction in terms of the most ah&urd and mischiovoua kind, that while there was all this excitement in Gieat Britain and Lehnd against the pretensions of the prelates of tho church of Rome, those prelates should, in our colonial possessions, have under the direct sanction and authoi'ty of Her Mnje&ty's Ministers, all honour, rank, and precedence assigned them. (Hear, hear.) Suppose there were at this moment some pretender to the thiono of England residing abroad, who in his character of pietender should appoint a number of persons to offices in tho Government and to seats in the Parliament of England, such appointments would be, as a matter of course, simply nugatory and absurd ; hut, according- to the analogy of the Roman Catholic bishops vvero such appointments made to the colonies of'Gieat Britain, they would be acknowledged and effective. It was his decided opinion that a clause ought to have been inserted in this bill placing the Roman.Catholic bishops in our colonies in precisely the same position as Roman Catholic prelates at home. (Ileav, hear.) Eail Guev wished to offer a few remarks relative to the opinion expressed by a right lev. pielate (the Bishop of Oxford), that no l.mk or title should be given by the Crown to tho Roman Catholic prelates without some distinct and foimal instrument under the sign manual. The light igv. prelate referred to the instructions given by him to the governois of the colonies, who \\(>ie told to give titles of honour to Roman Catholic pi elates. In some of tho colonies the Roman Catholics weie placed v\>ni a perfect equality with other sects. In Avibtia' ..' j ' ased tbe endowments upon pu'ciMiy t!ie *■ " ■ ' 'V' I'^1 '^ as ouv ovmi cliiucb. lv ofhci ooiu.m 1^ 'i ' • .. j icrju.'cd fnmi Roman Cnlhohc jHiWH-, tl>( iliM»3ii C itiiohc Joligion was the established H'h'^ion ot thobe colonies. It was lepiesentpd to him by tlio Roman Catholic prelate* m those colonies that it would he unjust that they should be denied tiiobe bocial distinctions which were given to Protestant prelates, and accordingly inoiructions wore 1 issued ih.U the titles of "my bid" aivl "your giace '

should be given to Roman Catholic prelate, in the same maanei as to the prelates of our own church. Wuh lesjard to the English colonial bishops, they only possessed their titles in thp same manner, and enjoyed them by the same authority as the Roman Catholic prelates. r J he right lev. prelate appeared to deny this, hut it Mould be impossible for him to find any formal document giving those titles to the prelates of the piolestant chinch. T He considered it as a misfortune to to the prelates and to the religious interests of both clmiches that theso titles should have been conferred upon them in the colonies (hear, hear), and, if nothing Ivad pieviously been done, he should have established equality between them, not by giving these titles to the Roman Catholic pi elates, but by taking them away from the others (Hear, hear.) It would bo infinitely better /or the prospenty of both churches and for the lehgioua peace of these poitions of Her Majesty's dominions it these titles did not exist at all. It was not an anomaly, too, that these prelates should have titles which weie a great encumbrance to them. Some of those Romau Catholic prelates had an income scarcely sufficient for their decent maintenance, and to encumber them with style and dignity was a great anomaly. But when the two chuiches were endowed in the same manner, and when there was so strong a feeling in favour of leligious equality in those colonies, social lank, when given to the ecclesiastics of one church, could not in jusiico or fairness be withheld from those of the other. In the correspondence which bad taken place on the subject, it happened, curiously enough, though of course he could nor have foreseen the storm laised in this country during the last 12 months, he had taken precisely that distinction? the adherence to which by the Roman Catholic hierarchy would have pi evented all that stoim. By the papers on the table it would be seen that the Government, taking the act of 1829 for their guide, had refused to recognize territorial titles in respect to Roman Catholic prelates in the colonies. The government said that all they could recognize was their rank as Roman Catholic prelates within a c rtain di&irict. In reference to the observations which had fallen from a noble duke (Newcastle, we believe) as to opinions formerly expressed by him (Eail Grey), he begged to add that from no one of those opinions did ho depart at the present moment, lie remained, ns always, a film supporter of the principle of religious freedom, being etrongly of opinion that the policy of this country towards the Roman Catholics of h eland had been in a high degree erroneous, and move especially injuiious to the spread of the Protestant religion m that country. At the same time he was of no less decided opinion that the law and authority of the Crown ought to be, wider all circumstances, strictly and firmly maintained against the rescript of any foreign power. * [In a letter from the Bishop of Sydney to Si r Charles Fitzroy laid before Parliament during the last Session, we find this point thus referred to : — " The title proper to be employed in all official communications has been settled by an authority perfectly decisive, that is, the authority of Her Majesty by letters patent under the Great Seal, wherein it is given and granted that " the said Bishop and his Successors shall be for ever hereafter called and known by the name or title of the Lord Bishop of Sydney .?" The Bishop proceeds to "tender an explicit declaration against its being implied from any act of his, that an ecclesiastical equality can be constituted betwen the churches of England and Rome as to the status of their respective prelates in the same see 3 within the Queen's dominions." The Bishop and the noble Colonial Secretary seem at variance both as to premises and conclusions.]