is no church established by law, is in the same situation with any other religious body.”  In 1865 it adjudged Bishop Gray’s letters patent, as metropolitan of Cape Town, to be powerless to enable him “to exercise any coercive jurisdiction, or hold any court or tribunal for that purpose,” since the Cape colony already possessed legislative institutions when they were issued; and his deposition of Bishop Colenso was declared to be “null and void in law” (re The Bishop of Natal).  With the exception of Colenso the South African bishops forthwith surrendered their patents, and formally accepted Bishop Gray as their metropolitan, an example followed in 1865 in the province of New Zealand.  In 1862, when the diocese of Ontario was formed, the bishop was elected in Canada, and consecrated under a royal mandate, letters patent being by this time entirely discredited.  And when, in 1867, a coadjutor was chosen for the bishop of Toronto, an application for a royal mandate produced the reply from the colonial secretary that “it was not the part of the crown to interfere in the creation of a new bishop or bishopric, and not consistent with the dignity of the crown that he should advise Her Majesty to issue a mandate which would not be worth the paper on which it was written, and which, having been sent out to Canada, might be disregarded in the most complete manner.”  And at the present day the colonial churches are entirely free in this matter.  This, however, is not the case with the church in India.  Here the bishops of sees founded down to 1879 receive a stipend from the revenue (with the exception of the bishop of Ceylon, who no longer does so).  They are not only nominated by the crown and consecrated under letters patent, but the appointment is expressly subjected “to such power of revocation and recall as is by law vested” in the crown; and where additional oversight was necessary for the church in Tinnevelly, it could only be secured by the consecration of two assistant bishops, who worked under a commission for the archbishop of Canterbury which was to expire on the death of the bishop of Madras.  Since then, however, new sees have been founded which are under no such restrictions:  by the creation of dioceses either in native states (Travancore and Cochin), or out of the existing dioceses (Chota Nagpur, Lucknow, &c.).  In the latter case there is no legal subdivision of the older diocese, the new bishop administering such districts as belonged to it under commission from its bishop, provision being made, however, that in all matters ecclesiastical there shall be no appeal but to the metropolitan of India.

Spiritual autonomy.