supremacy or with British nationality.  When, on the conclusion of peace, the church-people of Connecticut sent Dr. Samuel Seabury to England, with a request to the archbishop of Canterbury to consecrate him, it is not surprising that Archbishop Moore refused.  In the opinion of prelates and lawyers alike, an act of parliament was necessary before a bishop could be consecrated for a see abroad; to consecrate one for a foreign country seemed impossible, since, though the bestowal of the potestas ordinis would be valid, the crown, which, according to the law, was the source of the episcopal jurisdiction, could hardly issue the necessary mandate for the consecration of a bishop to a see outside the realm (see BISHOP).  The Scottish bishops, however, being hampered by no such legal restrictions, were more amenable; and on the 11th of November 1784 Seabury was consecrated by them to the see of Connecticut.  In 1786, on the initiative of the archbishop, the legal difficulties in England were removed by the act for the consecration of bishops abroad; and, on being satisfied as to the orthodoxy of the church in America and the nature of certain liturgical changes in contemplation, the two English archbishops proceeded, on the 14th of February 1787, to consecrate William White and Samuel Prevoost to the sees of Pennsylvania and New York (see PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH).

This act had a significance beyond the fact that it established in the United States of America a flourishing church, which, while completely loyal to its own country, is bound by special ties to the religious life of England.  It marked the emergence of the Church of England from that insularity to which what may be called the territorial principles of the Reformation had condemned her.  The change was slow, and it is not yet by any means complete.

Since the Church of England, whatever her attitude towards the traditional Catholic doctrines, never disputed the validity of Catholic orders whether Roman or Orthodox, nor the jurisdiction of Catholic bishops in foreign countries, the expansion of the Anglican Church has been in no sense conceived as a Protestant aggressive movement against Rome.  Occasional exceptions, such as the consecration by Archbishop Plunket of Dublin of a bishop for the reformed church in Spain, raised so strong a protest as to prove the rule.  In the main, then, the expansion of the Anglican Church has followed that of the British empire, or, as in America, of its daughter states; its claim, so far as rights of jurisdiction are concerned, is to be the Church of England and the English race, while recognizing its special duties towards the non-Christian populations subject to the empire or brought within the reach of its influence.  As against the Church of Rome, with its system of rigid centralization, the Anglican Church represents the principle of local autonomy, which it holds to be once more primitive and more catholic.  In this respect the Anglican communion has developed on the lines defined in her articles at the Reformation; but, though in principle there is no great difference between a church defined by national, and a church defined by racial boundaries, there is an immense difference in effect, especially when the race—­as in the case of the English—­is itself ecumenical.