precisely on the same principles which have hitherto ruled all the ecclesiastical decisions of the Queen in Council. The charges were stripped of all extraneous matter and reduced to bare positive statements, in which the direct language of the defendants was tried by the direct language of the Articles. Upon an inquiry thus conducted, it was decided that the incriminated passages did not sustain the condemnation of the writers. If this form of procedure be compared with the condemnation fulminated by Convocation against the obnoxious volume, the reader may have a correct notion of the distinction between a judicial trial and a theological proscription.

There is yet another class of cases heard before the Privy Council which partake of an ecclesiastical character, although they reach the Court of Final Appeal by a different road, and they do not fall within the jurisdiction of the Queen in Council as Head of the Church of England. We refer to the suits affecting ecclesiastical interests in the colonies. The authority of the colonial bishops over their clergy is subject to the laws of the colonies in which that authority is exercised, and in case of abuse, recourse is had to the Colonial Courts of Justice, from which an appeal lies to the Queen in Council. Thus it was that the Privy Council decided, in 1839, the case of Bowerbank v. the Bishop of Jamaica, and in 1863 the case of Long v. the Bishop of Cape Town. In both instances the proceedings taken by these bishops against incumbents in their respective dioceses were quashed for an entire absence of legality and authority in the forms of procedure. A still more notorious case has recently been argued before the Judicial Committee upon a special reference by the Queen, in the matter of the alleged deposition of the Bishop of Natal by the Bishop of Cape Town. But although the theological opinions of Bishop Colenso may by possibility hereafter form an element in this discussion, just as the theological opinions of the English Presbyterians were discussed in the Court of Chancery in the matter of Lady Hewley's Charity, yet the essence of the contest is one not of doctrine but of discipline. It is an interesting dispute as regards Church Government and the relations of the Crown to the Church in the colonies; but it has nothing to do with Bishop Colenso's lucubrations on the Pentateuch.

The conclusion we draw from this brief sketch of the origin and constitution of the Court of Final Appeal in Ecclesiastical Causes, and from the manner in which that jurisdiction is exercised, may be summed up in few words. No power or duty of the Crown is more expressly vested in the Sovereign of these

realms, by the authority of Parliament and with the assent of the clergy, than this headship and supremacy in the Churchterms to which we ascribe no mystical or religious meaning, but simply that of supreme jurisdiction. This supremacy of jurisdiction is not a fiction of law or an obsolete prerogative of the Crown: it has been exercised directly by Queen Victoria in twelve or fourteen cases of moment to the Church since her accession to the throne, and this is the only authority known to the Constitution by which such controversies can be legally decided. The Queen refers to certain of her Privy Council the appeals laid before her in Council; the Judicial Committee has no authority whatever in these matters beyond that of making a report upon the cases referred to it: the Queen approves in person the report of the Committee on each case, and her mandate alone causes it to be carried into execution. These are the facts; and this is the constitution of the Church of England in respect to this jurisdiction.

We cannot understand, therefore, on what grounds, unless it be in entire ignorance of the subject, men holding high office in this very Church-owing their dignity and temporal possessions to her laws-exercising themselves a portion of her authority, have of late spoken of this Court of Ecclesiastical Appeal as if it rested with them to substitute a Court of Bishops or a Committee of Professors for the Crown; and as if such a change as they are contending for-a transfer of one of the highest functions of the Sovereign to a board of churchmen could be made without the overthrow of the Royal Supremacy. Such a proposal would be an invasion of the Prerogative of the Crown which cannot even be submitted to Parliament without the Queen's assent previously obtained; and to carry it into effect would be sensibly to modify some of the fundamental statutes on which the establishment of the Church of England rests. We are not now discussing whether the existence of a Church connected with the State is beneficial to the interests of religion and of the nation. We think it is— we assume that it is-but at any rate it does not lie in the mouths of the dignitaries and powers of the existing Church to contest the conditions of their own establishment. They owe much to the law: if they hope to retain what they owe to the law, they must support and obey the law. It is an ominous sign for the perpetuity of the Established Church, that men of great earnestness and learning like Dr. Pusey are beginning to point to secession, and may one day seek to regain the unlimited power of making and administering their own laws and tenets by lapsing into schism and dissent.

But

it will be easier to drive all the doctors in Oxford from their chairs and their stalls, than to persuade the people of England to consign the leaders of opinion and fair inquiry in this age to their uncontrolled jurisdiction. Happily the existing jurisdiction of the Queen in Church and State affords to the nation an ancient and efficient barrier against the extravagant pretensions of the clerical party on the one hand, and the levelling tendencies of the enemies of religion on the other: by that alone the discipline of the Church may be maintained without encroaching on her freedom; and she may continue to unite, as she has done for three centuries, stability with progress.

In conclusion we would urge one consideration on those who are engaged in attacking the present mode in which the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Queen is exercised-before they destroy the existing tribunal, are they quite certain that they are able to construct a better one? The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is for these purposes a mixed body, consisting of prelates and judges, appointed not on any personal grounds, but because they fill the highest rank in their respective professions. If it is to cease to be a mixed body, it must become either wholly clerical or wholly judicial. To the first of these alterations we are certainly opposed on constitutional principles: to the second alteration we are averse because it is just and reasonable that the chief dignitaries in the Church should be consulted on matters affecting her welfare, and this has been the immemorial usage of the Sovereigns of this realm. The churchmen who are now agitating to exclude the Bishops from the Committee of Council are, in truth, seeking to inflict a severe blow on the Establishment, and they will doubtless receive in Parliament the strenuous support of its worst enemies. But those who, like ourselves, desire the permanence of the Church of England under the safeguard of the law, have only to contend that neither its legal nor its spiritual character should be altered, but that, in the words of the first Statute of the Reformation, both their authorities and jurisdictions do 'conjoin together in the due administration of justice, the one to help the other.'

6

ART. VII.-Report of Resolutions adopted at a Conference of Delegates from the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, and the Colonies of Newfoundland and Prince Edward's Island, held in the City of Quebec on the 10th of October, 1864, as the Basis of a proposed Confederation of those Provinces and Colonies.

AMALGAMATION is the order of the day, the approved process by which capitalists of all classes are doubling their profits and defying their competitors. From our railway companies and millionaires the co-operative infection has spread to our mechanics and artisans. Men of all sorts and conditions, at home and abroad (theologians excepted), are seeking in union that strength with which it is proverbially identical. A colossal project of this nature has been just presented to our notice in the proposed fusion of the five provinces of British North America, with power to add to their number' as many of the communities lying within British boundaries between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans as may, on terms hereafter to be defined, elect to join this vast copartnership. Even to nations unconnected by political or geographical affinities with the parties more immediately concerned, the success or failure of a scheme embracing in its contingent operations an area exceeding that of Europe is no matter of indifference. To Great Britain it is impossible to over-estimate the importance and extent of the ultimate consequences depending on this crisis in the history of her Transatlantic provinces. For there are problems of colonial policy the solution of which cannot, without peril, be indefinitely delayed, and though Imperial England is doing her best to keep up appearances in the management of her five and forty dependencies, the political links which once bound them to each other and to their common centre are evidently worn out. Misgivings haunt the public mind as to the stability of an edifice which seems to be founded on a reciprocity of deception, and only to be shored up for the time by obsolete and meaningless traditions. Economists fail to comprehend the value of outlying provinces which garrison their frontiers with our troops, while they exclude our manufactures from their markets. Even orthodox politicians, who would shrink from a Colonial Emancipationist as from a pestilent heretic, cannot help asking themselves sometimes whether it is possible or desirable that these little islands of our's, whose whole area scarcely exceeds 130,000 square miles, should for ever retain, even a nominal

dominion, over a fifth of the habitable globe. These hints at a possible disturbance of their existing relations very naturally shock our Colonists, who have no wish to part company with us, and think it very wicked even to talk of dismembering an empire on which the sun never sets.' It is not unnatural that the desire to maintain a connexion with the power and wealth of the mother-country should be stronger on the side of the Colonies than it is on that of the British public, for they owe almost everything to us, and we receive but little in return from them. Moreover, the existing system of colonial government enables them to combine all the advantages of focal independence with the strength and dignity of a great empire. But the Imperial Government, in the meantime, has to decide, not as of old whether Great Britain is to tax the Colonies, but to what extent the Colonies are to be permitted to tax Great Britain-a question which is daily becoming more urgent and less easy of solution. To register the edicts of Provincial Legislatures is now almost the only remaining function of the Colonial Office; and in the absence of any distinct indications of public opinion at home as to the course to be pursued in the administration of our Dependencies, the smallest contributions from Colonial sources which may tend to simplify the task of the authorities in Downing Street will, no doubt, be thankfully received.

The new British American programme has arrived at a seasonable period of indecision, and this circumstance will insure for its promoters, at all events, a favourable hearing. We learn from Mr. Cardwell's despatch to Lord Monck of the 3rd December that this scheme has already received the deliberate consideration of Her Majesty's Government; and in the course of the ensuing spring it is expected that a deputation will arrive in this country for the purpose of bringing over the Quebec propositions, which will then be submitted in the form of a Bill to the Imperial Legislature. The time is therefore come when this subject must be fully discussed, and no question of greater interest is likely to come before Parliament in the session of 1865, for it raises numerous points of great novelty and complexity, and it will affect the future condition of a vast extent of territory, of a people verging on independence, and, in a less degree, of England herself.

Of all the provinces added to our empire during the last three centuries, none have on the whole proved less troublesome to the parent State than the long belt which extends from the shores of Lake Superior to the banks of Newfoundland. We have heard, it is true, in times past, of Canadian