The real defect in the Diocesan Conferences which are taking
place, is, so far as regards the representation of the laity, un- questionably the utterly unreal character of that representation. We believe that there are very few dioceses in which the majority of the Church laity ever have the chance given them of voting for any representative whatever, or even know that they have a vote which they might give towards the election of laymen to these Conferences. And as for the House of Laymen in the Province of Canterbury, the present writer has never yet met with a Churchman who has been asked for a vote, or has been told how he might exercise his right, if he chose, as a layman belonging to the Province of Can- terbury, in the selection of a representative to send to the House of Laymen. While this condition of things continues, these Diocesan Conferences, so far as they are lay bodies, and the House of Laymen in the Province of Canterbury, will neces- sarily be utter failnres,—indeed, mere accidental assemblages of certain ecclesiastical-minded laymen who happen to have been co-opted into the various bodies which give themselves out as representing the lay opinion of the Church.
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