cusp. 1] THE CHURCH IN THE DOMINIONS 1439 
was refused by the High Court on the ground that up to the 
issue of the writ in that action no civil right of the plaintiff 
had been infringed. 
It was clearly laid down by all the judges that the Presby- 
terian Church, like any other religious body in Australia, 
was in the eyes of the law a voluntary association, the mutual 
relations and obligations of the members of which were 
regulated by the terms of an agreement to which they were 
parties, and which had been adopted partly in 1863, when 
several Presbyterian congregations formed themselves to- 
gether as an ecclesiastical body under the name of the 
Presbyterian Church of Queensland, and partly in 1874, 
when a scheme for the general management of Church affairs 
was drawn up providing for the administration of the Church 
on the general principles of the Presbyterian Churches in all 
parts of the world. 
An Act of Queensland was passed in 1900 under which it 
was contended by the appellants that the Courts set up by 
the agreements were independent judicial institutions of the 
State, whose proceedings could not be called in question in 
the Supreme Court. That view was rejected out and out 
by the full Court of Queensland, and the High Court repeated 
the condemnation, saying it was for the Court and not for 
the parties to determine the interpretation of the contract. 
The majority of the Court also held that the plaintiff could 
not lose his right to bring a case. It was always in the 
power of a Court of Law to interpret and give effect to a 
compact when any civil right depended upon its terms. It 
could not be held that the minister of the Presbyterian 
Church was to be in the position of members of the Roman 
Catholic Church, and to surrender all his future prospects 
and living into the hands of an infallible General Assembly. 
The Chief Justice thought also that the Cardross? case was 
authority for holding that the issue of a writ in such a case 
was not a breach of the ordination vow. 
O’Connor J. shared the same opinion. He admitted, how- 
over, that a voluntary association might bind its members 
' McMillan v. The Free Church of Scotland, 22 D. 290. Cf, 23 D. 1314. 
7.2