—After being disturbed all day by learning the opinion of Law Officers in your matter, and greatly disturbed because I saw in the delay, and in the temporary authority of another as the founder of your diocese, various and grave evils, I have caught a glimpse of something better than that—nay, perhaps, from the greatness of the idea, of something greater for you as a Church Founder than we have yet imagined—in Mr. Sewell's statement that you talked about mastering the adverse circumstances, by going out with the First Body, and coming back for your consecration after really yourself laying the first stone of this only Church Colony.

I pray that this thought of yours may grow into a resolution; as such, it would substantially avert the evils that I dread for you and the colony; and it might even raise Canterbury higher than almost any thing else could in the public regard.

If you sailed during all September, or even October, that would be with the First Body: for many of the First Body will not go with these ships which only take the first batch.

What such an action would do for the Church may be conceived by reflecting on the effect of martyrdom.

Excuse me for uttering these thoughts. They grow out of my knowledge of New Zealand, which tells me that the arrangement now proposed—that of handing the Canterbury colonists over for a time to somebody not their own bishop, will be full of discomfort and evil for everybody: besides that I seriously doubt whether Bishop Selwyn may give the required consent if the matter is so left that he may himself supply the vacancy in the Canterbury Bishopric.