The Church and the State
S1R,—Mr. Felvus Walker appears to object to the Court of Final Appeal proposed by the Commission on Canon Law because it would not be " directly appointed by the Crown, [and] would have on it a majority of bishops." Yet the judges in the present diocesan and provincial courts are not appointed by the Crown but by the bishops and arch- bishops, and these courts are certainly the King's ecclesiastical courts administering, in the words I quoted from Sir Edward Coke, " the King's ecclesiastical laws of this realm." In the same way the proposed Court of Final Appeal, if it came into existence, would be the King's supreme ecclesiastical court, and by appealing to it a litigant would be exercising that " right of final appeal to the Crown in ecclesiastical causes " which Mr. Walker desires.
Moreover, if he had read a little further on the page of the Archbishop of York's book to which he refers, he would have found that the proposals of the commission make it clear " that any of his Majesty's subjects who feels aggrieved for lack of justice or abuse of process in any proceedings in an ecclesiastical court has the right to apply at any stage in these proceedings to His Majesty's High Court of Justice." (See the Report of the Commission, page 195.) What more does Mr.
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