THE BISHOP OF NEW ZEALAND'S STIPEND.

New Zealander, Volume 10, Issue 885, 7 October 1854, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE BISHOP OF NEW ZEALAND'S STIPEND.

[From the" Morning Chronicle,"July sth.] An untoward event has occurrod in an ecclesiastical quarter, which, in its immediate results, is humiliating to the country. We allude to the withdrawal of the stipend which has hitherto been paid to the Bishop of New Zealand. This is a proceeding which we can only characterise as thoroughly discreditable. It is a shahbiness and a meanness—a small bit of the smallest possible official machiavelism —a little, irritating, worthless piece of perversity, which embodies no principle, while it does an individual great wrong and injustice; and the only conceivable reason why the wrong is not instantly set right is, because to redress it. yvould imply that ofiicial people ran do wrong, and because it can be technically defended by the strict letter of a sharp legal interpretation. In 1842, the see of New Zealand was erected, and a stipend of £(100 per annum was assigned to it. The Church Missionary Society guaranteed a similar sum ; and the state allowance was provided by an annual Parliamentary vote. From 1842 to 1852, the New Zealand estimates regularly included this sum of £OOO, which was originally voted at the instance of Lord John Russell, then Colonial Secretary. One day last week, however, the Bishop, who is now in this country, received a note—an official and private one—from an Under Secretary of State, stating that the £(i00 was no longer in the estimates. That is to Bay, a salary which a man has enjoyed, under a Parliamentary vote, for a dozen years, may at any moment be withdrawn, without its being thought necessary to give the recipient, the slightest official or authoritative intimation that his whole income is to be cut off at a blow. Sir George Grey indeed, defends the principle of this. He says that it is not u sound Parliamentary doctrine" that an income dependent on a Parliamentary vote, once granted, should last as long as the receiver's tenure of the office. Perhaps not; hut it is a sound doctrine —sound in morals, sound in common sense, and sound in common decency—that when once a person, be he lawyer, parson, or soldier, gives up one office to take another, and tliis at the request of Government, he ought to be maintained in it. There arc vested rights whihe are va'id and binding in equity, honour, and good faith, though they may not be recognised in a court of law, and though they may clash with some people's notions of "sound Parliamentary doctrine." The case set up by those who have stopped the Bishop of New Zealand's income is, that according to the present policy of the empire, the colonics ought to be made self-supporting and independent—that imperial aid has been gradually withdrawn from New Zealand —that, in the first instance, its official stipends were only granted conditionally—that Sir John Pakington promised, last year, that the New Zealand expenditure should be extinguished—and that the present proceeding is in pursuance of that pledge. The Bishop's income, being one item of the expenditure in question, must for the future be undertaken by the colony itself. But, as we understand the matter, this is not a fair account of it. The Bishop's stipend always stood on a separate ground. The special New Zealand charges which have lately been relinquished, and very properly, by the mother-country, were caused by the war with the natives ; but the Bishop's stipend was anterior to, and distinct from, the other Imperial payments now withheld.

In the Bishop of New Zealand's case, as in that •f other colonial prelates, it was thought desirable, at the outset, to subsidise the incumbent of a peculiarly laborious and onerous cure. This was the rule in the West Indian dioceses. It has of late years been gradually, and, we may add, very judiciously relaxed—Bishopricks are not founded in this way now, and henceforth whoever founds or takes a colonial bishopric, does so at his own risk. But, in the present case, the question is> not as to the fitting mode of founding anew bishopric, or of providing for the future maintenance of a vast see, but as to the justice and decency of confiscating the income of an individual incumbent, during his incumbency. We do not say that, as regards the next Bishop of New Zealand, it might not very reasonably be left to the New JJealanders to pay, or not to pay him, as and how they please ; but that is not the question now. That colonies should be accustomed to maintain their own institutions is a sound principle; but suddenly to deprive an individual colonial office-bearer of his income, merely because Parliament has the power to do so, is to teach the colonies, not to support their own offices, but to rob their occupants. The question ought to be treated on its broad merits, quite apart from the individual. Sir George Grey says that the Bishop is \ery popular—that the colonial legislature will be sure to make up the i,'(!o0 —and that, therefore, no substantial wrong will be done. In other words it is a case in which jobbery is no sin, because the victim's friends will reimburse him. As it happens, we believe, that the £(>00 will be lost, and that the Bishop will never get a farthing from the Colonial Legislature. But the question is, not whether it will or will not be all right with the Bishop, but whether it is not a flagrant personal wrong to withdraw any official stipend—civil, judicial, or clerical—without giving the recipient eithernotice or compensation ; and as to the very unedifying controversy whether Sir John Pakington or Sir George Grey was the real author of the confiscation, the merits of the case are lost sight of in it. Sir John Pakington's intimation with respect to the withdrawal of all grants from New Zealand, certainly does, if literally construed, bear out Sir George Grey's construction. But it is unworthy of the Colonial Office to affix this iron interpretation on it; and it is unworthy of a Colonial Secretary to do an ungracious and ungenerous deed, inflicting great wrong on a third party, simply because his predecessor made an incautious promise of the full I

extent of which lie was, perhaps, ignorant. And we further say that a very perilous example has been set in withdrawing a Bishop's stipend in this capricious way. Bishops, like judges, ought not to be dependent on annual votes, and government favouritism, and legislative squabbles. It was only last week, that a very stong remonstrance was made on this very pofrkt, as regards judicial persons, by all the law lords. AVe say distinctly, that the Bishop of New Zealand's private character and popularity, ought not to have been alluded to as a plea for depriving him of his income. It is a very hard case that, because a man has eminently done his duty, he should be eminently victimised. The personal Sir George Grey so infelicitously urged, if it has any force, tells, or ought to tell, the other way. Bishop Sclwyn's apostolic virtues and apostolic successes, if the matter is to be made a personal one, deserved better treatment at the hands of bis country. Two or three days before it came out that one-half of his income had been confiscated by the withdrawal of the Parliamentary grant of £(>00, the Bishop had actually abandoned the other half to the Church Missionary Society, in order to found an additional see. Thus, in the course of one week, Bishop Selwyn voluntarily relinquishes half his income, and in order to show its estimate of such a religious act of selfdenial, Parliament withdraws the other half. Such is the mode in which a grateful country recognises and rewards the labours and saeriGces of a prelate who has planted the cross in the islands of Polynesia, who [has cristianized New Zealand, and by whose missionary efforts among the natives—and particularly by his successful mediation during the war—it has been preserved to the Empire as a British colony.