NEWS OF THE WEEK.
LORD WESTI3URY read the Privy Councirs judgment (drawn up by Lord Kingsdown) in the Bishop of Natal's case on Monday, deciding that neither the patent of the metropolitan Bishop of Capetown nor the patent of the Bishop of Natal could convey any legal jurisdiction, because both colonies had received representative institutions at the time of the grant of these patents, and the mere prerogative of the Crown would not extend to establish any new ecclesiastical Court in colonies so situated. In a Crown colony proper the Queen's patent might effect this, but not in one where that pre- rogative has already been given away or limited by free colonial institutions. The judgment absolutely puts an end to the dream of some ecclesiastical parties that the Queen is head of the Church in a different sense from that in which she is head of the State, and that to recognize the Queen's authority is not to recognize the authority of Parliament over the Church. It affirms in the strongest way that her ecclesiastical authority and her secular authority are alike limited by the Legislature. The Bishops of Capetown and Natal are therefore the "baseless fabrics of a vision." Dr. Colenso is a bishop in the abstract, and Dr. Gray is a metropolitan in the abstract, but no clergyman in the diocese of either is in any way subject to their authority. If a clergyman lives a disgraceful life, or even sacrifices to idols, no one can punish him but the societies who pay his income—by withdraw- ing it. If the two episcopal abstractions resigned together their ineffectual patents, they would only throw off a titular authority which it is scarcely manly to attempt to keep.
