1. Extract from Bishop Selwyn's Letter.

In order to bring this matter fairly before the readers of this letter, and that they may see the full importance of its bearing on the controversy, it will be necessary for me to quote somewhat largely from your Lordship's pamphlet. On page 20, you write thus :—"Bishop Hadfield includes among those positions which he says are 'absolutely without any foundation whatever'—a formula which he employs more than once—my statement that 'the Primate of New Zealand, acting in the name and by the authority of the General Synod, empowered Archbishop Longley to select and consecrate a Bishop for Dunedin.' Well, I can only repeat for the twentieth time, and with the full conviction that it may be necessary to repeat it twenty times more, that the assertion is made on the distinct authority of the late Primate of Now Zealand. It is not my statement, but his; and, in affirming that 'it is absolutely without any foundation whatever,' Bishop Hadfield contradicts not me, but Bishop Selwyn whose words, in answer to a doubt expressed by me, whether I need have accepted the Constitution at so early a period, are as follows—the date is April, 1866, four months before my consecration : 'You seem to have been told that your subscription to the New Zealand Church Constitution was premature, if not unnecessary. On the contrary, the General Synod expressly requested the Archbishop of Canterbury to place our Constitution in the hands of any clergyman whom he might select, and obtain page 8 his written assent to it, before he recognised him as Bishop Designate.'"

The italics in the above extract are your Lordship's, or Bishop Selwyn's, I cannot say which; but, if your own, you have very justly emphasised the words; for, if the statements contained in them were only correct, the Church of New Zealand would have absolutely no case at all, and in continuing to reject your claim to have been First Bishop of Dunedin, would more than justify the charges you bring against her, of "recklessness," "perverseness," "falsehood," and "wrong." But, painful as it is to say it, the words must be spoken; the statements contained in that extract from Bishop Selwyn's letter are, to use the words of Bishop Hadfield, "absolutely without any foundation whatever." I write under a full sense of responsibility, and I say again most distinctly, that the statement that "the General Synod expressly requested the Archbishop of Canterbury to place our Constitution in the hands of any clergyman whom he might select"—i.e., for the See of Dunedin—"and obtain his written assent to it, before he recognised him as Bishop Designate" of Dunedin—is "absolutely without any foundation whatever." Am I then imputing conscious untruthfulness, downright deliberate falsehood, to the late Primate of New Zealand? By no means; but I am bound to affirm that, in writing the words of that extract, his Lordship fell into a most extraordinary and inconceivable mistake. There is just enough, as I shall presently show, in the proceedings of the General Synod of 1865, to account for such a mistake having been made, through confusion of memory; but what, I confess, is most unaccountable, is the fact that such a mistake, having been made so long ago as 1866, should not since have been corrected, hut should have been allowed to remain and fester, and be the cause of deep-seated and spreading mischief. I can only suppose that the words which his Lordship had written escaped his memory afterwards, in the multiplicity of his engagements, and that they have never fairly come under his consideration since. If the case were not a very clear one, it may well be conceived that I should not presume, nay, that I should not page 9 dare, to bring such a charge against such a man; if I cannot show it to be a clear one, then I am content to bear all the odium and all the disgrace that such a charge against such a man, if proved to be unfounded, would entail. That the course I am taking, and the risk I am encountering, is disagreeable to myself, needs hardly to be said; nothing short of the strongest possible sense of obligation would induce me to pursue the one, and to brave the other.

Before I proceed to the proof, that the statements contained in the extract from Bishop Selwyn's letter are "absolutely without any foundation whatever," suffer me to point out the extreme importance which attaches to this extract—not for your Lordship's sake, but for the sake of those who may read this letter without having previously read your pamphlet. It may be truly said that the whole case between the Church of New Zealand and yourself hinges on the correctness or incorrectness of this extract.

After quoting it, you proceed to comment upon it as follows, on page 21:—"If language has any meaning at all, the above extract proves that the Archbishop was authorised by the General Synod to do three things :—1. To select a clergyman; 2. To obtain his written assent to the Constitution; 3. To recognise him as Bishop Designate. And all these several stops did Archbishop Longley take in regard to myself." Again, on page 23, you say, with, if possible, still greater clearness and emphasis :—" "What I have said, and what I now repeat, is this: that Archbishop Longley, being 'expressly requested by the General Synod to place the Constitution in the hands of any clergyman whom he might select, and obtain his written assent to it, before he recognised him as Bishop Designate,' did select me, did place the Constitution in my hands, did obtain my written assent to it, and did recognise me as Bishop Designate." If then your Lordship has rightly understood the extract (and this can hardly be doubted—your interpretation of it, so far as I am aware, has not been corrected), it follows that it is, so to say, the articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiæ Novæ Zelandiæ. If the General Synod did make page 10 this request to the Archbishop of Canterbury with reference to the Bishopric of Dunedin, there is not another word to be said on its behalf; I, for one, throw up my brief at once.

To come then to the point. The letter from which the extract is taken, was written in April 1866, and refers therefore to the General Synod of 1865, the only one indeed, to which it could possibly refer. Now I have a very clear recollection of all matters of importance dealt with by that Synod, having been a member of it, and absent from none of its sittings. Moreover, I have now before me the printed Report of its proceedings, and have just carefully gone through it once more, having done so several times previously, in order to be quite sure that I am not mistaken in what I am about to assert. The result is, that I feel bound to state once more, most distinctly, in the words of Bishop Hadfield, that there is "absolutely no foundation whatever" for the statements contained in the extract. Two resolutions were adopted by that Synod, which may have left some traces of themselves on the memory of the writer, who presided over that Synod, and which may possibly have given rise to his mistake; but it will be seen, when I quote them, that neither of them supplies the least shadow of foundation for the statements in question. The first, which was adopted on the Eleventh Sitting Day, 11th May, 1865, (see page 55 of the Report) runs as follows :—Moved by Mr. Dutton, seconded by Dr. Donald,—"That the Nelson Diocesan Synod having deputed to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London the nomination of a successor to the present Bishop of Nelson; and the Bishop of London having notified that he is prepared to exercise such right of nomination, this Synod do forward to His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury a copy of Clause 23 of the Constitution Deed, and request his Grace will be pleased to act on behalf of the General Synod in sanctioning, at his discretion, the nomination of a clergyman by the Bishop of London, and to take the necessary steps for giving effect to the nomination." Carried. It is obvious that this Resolution has no more to do with the Bishopric of Dunedin than it has with the Bishopric of Cape- page 11 town, or any other Bishopric. Neither is there any general principle involved in it, such as might in the remotest degree lend any countenance to the statements of the extract. It is the delegation of a particular power to a particular person in a particular case. And it has nothing whatever to do with the selection of a clergyman, but only with the sanctioning of a selection made by another person. It may be as well, perhaps, for the sake of perfect clearness, that I should recite Clause 23 of the Constitution Deed, referred to in the above resolution. It runs thus :—"The nomination of a Bishop shall proceed from the Diocesan Synod, and if such nomination be sanctioned by the General Synod, or, if the General Synod be not in session, by the majority of the Standing Committees of the several Dioceses, the senior Bishop shall take the necessary steps for giving effect to the nomination. Provided that every such nomination shall be made upon condition that the person so nominated shall, before accepting the nomination, declare in writing his assent to this Constitution." The General Synod, accordingly, by the above Resolution, delegated to the Archbishop of Canterbury its right of sanctioning the nomination which should be made to the Bishopric of Nelson, just as the Diocesan Synod of Nelson had previously delegated the right of nomination itself to the Bishop of London. Before the Synod broke up, news was received from England of the exercise of the delegated right of nomination by the Bishop of London, and, accordingly, we read on page 63 of the Report, that on Monday, 15th May, "the President announced that the Rev. Andrew Burn Suter, Incumbent of All Saints Stepney, had been nominated as successor to the Bishop of Nelson." 2. If the Resolution just referred to affords no countenance to the statements of the extract, still less, if possible, does the other, to which I have alluded. So wide is it indeed of the mark, that I should not cite it at all, but for the fact that when, at the recent meeting of the Sixth General Synod at Wellington, I was comparing in a speech the statements in question with the Report of the Proceedings of the Third General Synod, as I have just been doing in the above paragraphs, it was doubtfully page 12 suggested by a leading lay member of the Synod, that it was just possible the Bishop of Lichfield might have been referring to the Resolution on page 59, adopted two days after the former one, and which I now quote :—Moved by the Bishop of Christchurch, seconded by the Rev. Dr. Maunsell,—"That this Synod instruct the Bishops of this Ecclesiastical Province to memorialise the authorites of the State in England for the purpose of obtaining their consent to the regulation of the General Synod as expressed in Clause 23 of the Deed of Constitution, viz : 'That the nomination of a Bishop shall proceed from the Diocesan Synod and be sanctioned by the General Synod,' or, pending their decision on this matter, that they appoint no Bishop to any vacant See in this Ecclesiastical Province, unless he shall be willing to declare his assent to this Constitution." Carried. It will be seen that this Resolution, though it refers to the requirement of assent to the Constitution, makes no mention of the Archbishop of Canterbury at all, much less to the selection by him of a clergyman for the See of Dunedin; the memorial was to be addressed to "the authorities of the State in England." In point of fact, no memorial of the sort was ever sent, as the Bishop of Lichfield is aware; for, immediately after the breaking up of the Session of the General Synod in 1865, news arrived of the delivery of the Judgment of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council upon the petition of Bishop Colenso, known as the Westbury Judgment, delivered on the 20th March, 1865, the effect of which was to declare, that the Crown had no power to create Dioceses, or appoint Bishops as corporations sole, by letters patent, in Colonies possessing an independent legislature. By this Judgment the whole aspect of the relations between the Church in the Colonies, and the authorites of the State in England, was completely changed. So much was this felt to be the case by the Primate of New Zealand and his Comprovincials, that they took the decided step of offering to surrender their letters patent, and felt that they would be indemnified by the succeeding Synod for not sending homo any such Memorial as that which was contemplated by the Resolution above cited.

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The two resolutions then, which I have thus referred to at length, are manifestly wide of the mark; they do not touch the question; and there is absolutely nothing besides in the Report of the Proceedings of the Synod of 1865, which could by any possibility be construed into an authority given by the Synod to the Archbishop of Canterbury to select a clergyman for the See of Dunedin. It is true that the Synod adopted, on the 13th May, the resolution referred to by Bishop Abraham in his letter to the Guardian, with respect to the next place of meeting; but let us see what that amounts to. It certainly could not have been in the mind of the Bishop of Lichfield, when he penned the words of the extract which is under consideration. It is as follows (page 58) :—Moved by Mr. Quick, seconded by the Bishop of Christchurch—"That the next Session of the General Synod be held in Dunedin, if by the time of meeting there be a Bishopric of Dunedin constituted, and the Bishop shall have entered upon the duties of his office. If there be no Bishop, the next Session shall be held at Auckland." Carried. "If language has any meaning at all," to use your Lordship's words, neither this resolution, nor either of the two foregoing, can by any possibility be said to bear out the positive assertion that "the General Synod expressly requested the Archbishop of Canterbury to place our constitution in the hands of any clergyman whom he might select, and obtain his written assent to it, before he recognised him as Bishop Designate." I must therefore sadly, but emphatically, conclude this part of my letter with the re-iterated declaration, that the positive assertion just quoted is "absolutely without any foundation whatever."