My Lord,—

A sense of duty, amounting to a necessity, which I have endeavoured from time to time to put aside, but which has returned again and again impels mo to address to you the following letter. On several occasions during the last five or six years I have felt a desire to write to the editor of the Guardian, in whose pages the controversy with respect to your Lordship's claim to be Bishop of Dunedin has been chiefly carried on; but two considerations have withheld mo from doing so. In the first place, I have felt a great unwillingness to throw blame, directly or by implication, upon one whom I have so many reasons to revere and love, as the late Primate of New Zealand; and, secondly, I have on each occasion indulged the hope that, before my letter could reach England, this very painful and unedifying controversy would have altogether ceased. The impulse, which was scarcely more than a passing inclination on former occasions, has become, as I have said, a sense of duty, pressing more and more urgently, since I first read, less than six months ago, your Lordship's published pamphlet, entitled, "The See of Dunedin, NZ.: the Title of the Eight Rev. H. L. Jenner, D.D., to be accounted the First Bishop, briefly vindicated." This pamphlet was placed in my hands by a clergyman, who had not very long returned to this diocese from England, who informed mo at the same time that the statements therein contained, being generally accepted by Churchmen in page 6 England, had produced in many quarters, to his certain know, ledge, an impression exceedingly unfavourable to the Church in New Zealand. When I had read a few pages of the pamphlet, I could not wonder at this; and, before I had come to the end, I could not but acknowledge that, if its statements were only based on fact, the Church in New Zealand would not only have no ground to stand upon at all, but would richly deserve the very strong terms of condemnation in which your Lordship speaks of her conduct.

I must confess to have been perfectly astounded—a sensation from which I have not yet recovered—at the statements made by your Lordship in that pamphlet, not on your own authority, but on the authority of the Lord Bishop of Lichfield. I feel the strongest possible reluctance to impugn statements made on such authority, but I feel yet more strongly that to pass them over unnoticed and unanswered would be a positive sin. It is most deeply to he deplored that his Lordship should have fallen into such extraordinary and unaccountable mistakes, which have misled not only yourself, but the Archbishops and Bishops of England, and have been most prejudicial to that Church, which, on other grounds, owes to Bishop Selwyn so deep a debt of gratitude.

Before proceeding further, allow me to state distinctly that I am wholly and solely responsible both for the design of writing the present letter, and for its contents. I write unsolicited and unassisted. I have no claim to represent the Church of New Zealand, beyond the fact that I have been a member of the General Synods of 1865, 1868, 1871, and 1874, have been present at every sitting of those Synods, have voted, I believe, on every division, and, in particular, must own to a full share of of responsibility for every act of the General Synod in the matter of the Bishopric of Dunedin.

In the following remarks, I shall deal, first and chiefly, with the extract from Bishop Selwyn's letter to your Lordship, of April, 1866, which is to be found on page 21 of your pamphlet, and upon which you chiefly, and, I must say, reasonably rely. page 7 Afterwards, I propose to notice briefly some other points in your pamphlet, and some of the statements also contained in Bishop Abraham's letter to the Guardian of June 7, 1871, of which your Lordship says that it "remains unanswered and unanswerable." I have only further to premise, that it forms no part of my purpose to defend the conduct or language of individuals; whether defensible or not, I am not concerned with it; I express no opinion about it; the Church of New Zealand is responsible only for her own acts, and I have only to do with the questions at issue between your Lordship and that Church in her corporate capacity.