The New Zealand Bishops have memorialized the Crown to be
allowed to surrender their letters patent from the Crown, and " to be allowed to rely in the future on the powers inherent in their office for perpetuating the succession of their order within the -colony of New Zealand,"—that is, that they may be bishops by consecration alone, with power to consecrate new bishops in New Zealand. Moreover, they state that the bishops, clergy, and laity of the Anglican Church in New Zealand have agreed upon a con- -stitution for voluntary association. This constitution gives them the means of managing their Church, holding property, enforc- ing ecclesiastical discipline, and "maintaining sound doctrine," In other words, they will be an Anglican sect, with trustees recog- nized, they say, by the colonial legislature as the proper and legal -depositaries of their property. Well, if the colonial legislature -abjures all idea of an Established Church there, and the clergy- -men and laymen are satisfied to be merged in a sect, we suppose no one except existing clergymen who entered the national Church, and not an Anglican sect, can complain ; and such of them as object must keep sheep, or come home again. We confess we .should object very much indeed to sectarian Anglicanism, if we were -stranded on that inhospitable ecclesiastical shore.
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