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—As your first letter contained no caution against telling its news, and none seemed implied by the circumstances, I could not help mentioning what was to me great and good news. And indeed, I had a further motive —that of predisposing some friends in the Press (not Rintoul, who needed no prompting) to take a favourable view of the case as respects Irish politics. However, there is no harm done, since it is most expedient with a view to the future that the fact of your having received and declined the offer should be known. With respect to your having declined the offer, I shall go to Rintoul this morning for the purpose of getting him to put a suitable paragraph into the second edition of the Spectator today: I fear that there will not be time for the first.

And now, though I was truly glad to receive your first letter, yet on reflection and on the whole, if I had to choose for you, I should prefer the present state of the case: for it seems to me to point so directly to the far more desirable object of promotion here, that I shall now watch the Episcopal bench with a lively and practical interest. The only doubt with me is, whether Lord John may last out a vacancy or two. If he should, surely the treatment of his Jews Bill by those whom he has recently promoted will be a lesson to him: and this, operating along with your now powerful claim, must, I hope, prevail.

I hope you won't say a word to anybody about the Colonial Archbishopric. Great changes are taking place in the opinions of very leading men on the subject of colonization and colonial Government. Gladstone and Lord Lincoln have fully adopted the views set forth in my letter to the former, of which you had a printed copy; and they intend to act on their new convictions. Nothing perhaps may be done this year; but the time cannot be far distant when men holding these opinions will be in power. Then, but not till then, will page 29be the time to make them a present of the valuable (to them most valuable) idea of the Archbishopric; and if I make the present it shall be "for a consideration."

The Canterbury Association succeeds most successfully, and is most useful in spreading good ideas; though it will not do much else till next year, because, in consequence of Lord Grey's utter neglect of his own New Zealand polity, there is at present no land on which to plant the settlement.

All things conspire to induce me to use my present strength for the purpose of completing my long intended book on the Art of Colonization. With this view I am on the point of retiring out of the way of distractions for a few months. But a letter addressed to the N. Z. House will always reach me.

Assuring you again of my deliberate preference for you of the present state of things, to an immediate Irish Bishopric,