6
3.-The refusal of any one Diocese to concur in the organization of the
General Assembly, would render it impossible to effect such an orga-
nization under the Provincial Act, though, of course, a voluntary
Association, independently of the Act, may be formed, by the members
of any one or more of the Dioceses.
ADAM CROOKS,
EDWARD BLAKE.
Toronto, April 19, 1864.
In reply to the Bishop, I stated that " I should not attempt to
give any judgment of my own as to the value of the opinion he
had sent me. There evidently had been much confusion and
misapprehension, in relation to matters connected with the
Colonial Church, which the Imperial authorities were now anxious
to have set right. That, before the time arrived for the next
meeting of the Provincial Synod, I trusted we should have some
clear understanding of the course we ought to pursue; and I was
sure that no one could be more anxious than I was to have these
questions settled, whatever might be the decision arrrived at."
Whatever might have been the authority attached to the above
legal opinion for its own sake, in the judgment of the members of
the Church throughout the Province at large, yet as I heard a
few days after, that a vote had been taken at the Synod of the
Diocese of Huron, based upon'it, and that a memorial had been
forwarded by the Synod to the Queen, asking for the withdrawal of
the Letters-Patent altogether, I thought it my duty to place the
whole case, with all the documents relating theret?, and the opin-
ion of Messrs. Crooks & Blake, before Strachan Bethune, Esq.,
Q.C., my Chancellor; and I give below the answer I received
?from him:
1MONTBEAL, 28th June, 1864.
MY LoRD,--After full consideration of the " legal opinion" of Adam
'Crooks, Esq., Q.C., and Edward Blake, Esq., " with reference to the Gene-
" ral Assembly or Provincial Synod," submitted by your Lordship, and
-the letter of His Lordship the Bishop of Huron accompanying the same,
I have to report, that whatever objection may legally exist to the exer-
-cise by the Metropolitan of coercive jurisdiction, under the Letters-
,Patent of the 12th of February, 1862, the Orown had an undoubted