ssembling of a body not recognised by the legislative
council. The presbyterians, however, maintained that they were qualified
to act under convocation by the crown, independently of parliamentary or
local legislative sanction--that the meeting or synod only prepared the
preliminaries antecedent to the intervention of law. At the time
appointed the synod met: in the meantime Sir John Franklin was advised
that the proclamation of Snodgrass was irregular; he therefore sent his
private secretary, Captain Maconochie, to request the assembly to stay
proceedings, with an intimation of his friendly consideration of their
claims. They, however, considered that to disperse would compromise
their rights, and therefore chose a moderator. At this stage, a counter
proclamation, hastily prepared, was brought by a messenger from the
governor, and the convocation dissolved.

However conclusive this reasoning to Scotchmen, the Anglicans were
little disposed to admit its force. They asserted that the faith of the
sovereign was the imperial faith, and that it was within the competence
of the British legislature to set up an exclusive establishment of their
clergy. The usual argument against the universal equality of the Scots'
national church, was the fact that the laws of England, and not the laws
of Scotland, were binding in the colonies.[218] To this it was replied,
that treaties, on which the imperial legislative power was founded, were
the limits of its action; and that the ascendancy of English law in the
colonies of Australia depended on a parliamentary enactment passed by
the representatives of Scotland; subject, however, to the restrictions
of the treaties in virtue of which Scotchmen were contented to sit on
the benches of Saint Stephen.[219]

Archdeacon Hutchins denied that either treaty or law prohibited a
preferable claim, and remarked that "opening the door to two co-existing
establishments would shortly admit others, and thus prepare for the
destruction of all."

It was not affirmed by the Scotch, that they possessed an inherent right
to the privileges of an establishment: _both_, or _neither_, was their
motto. The colony, they affirmed, was not English nor Scotch, but
British. It was the opinion of lawyers, however, that beyond the seas
the churches of England and Scotland depended for their rights on
parliamentary or colonial enactment; and that whenever obscure, a
declaratory statute must fix the sense of a treaty, and