1444 THE CHURCH IN THE DOMINIONS [PART viI 
any interference of the Crown, which has no direct con- 
cern with non-established Churches, but if consecrated in 
England the consent of the Crown is requisite, and this 
applies also to those bishops who are consecrated for service 
in the Crown Colonies and Protectorates. In such cases 
it would still be possible, by the legislative power of the 
Crown, to provide bishops with coercive jurisdiction, but 
the principle has been steadily observed that bishops should 
not be given coercive jurisdiction even where?! the Crown 
has power to confer it. 
It was under consideration after 1791, when the King was 
empowered to make the Upper Houses in the Canadas 
hereditary and to annex titles of honour to seats in it, and 
the Law Officers of the Crown were asked, whether the 
Bishop of Nova Scotia could not be given a permanent seat 
in the Upper House, but the whole project fell through, and 
the Law Officers evidently thought that as far as the bishop 
was concerned the idea was not legally practicable. It used, 
however, to be the custom as a matter of course to give the 
bishop for the time being a seat in the Legislative Councils 
of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick? and an Act of New 
Brunswick of 1852 which purported to deprive him of such 
a seat was disallowed as an interference with the royal 
prerogative The bishops were all nominated on the 
nominee councils which preceded responsible government in 
the Australian Colonies, and their influence and authority was 
unquestionably very great. But their position was com- 
pletely changed on the introduction of responsible govern- 
ment, though for a long time thev retained. and to some 
* It could be done in places falling under the British Settlements Act, 1887 
(Gold Coast, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Southern Nigeria, Falkland Islands), 
in St. Helena (cf. 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 85), in Ceylon, Fiji, Malta, Gibraltar, 
Hong Kong, Trinidad, St. Lucia, Mauritius, Seychelles, British Guiana (con- 
guered or ceded Colonies), in Jamaica (29 & 30 Viet. c. 12), in Grenada 
and St. Vincent (39 & 40 Vict. c. 47 probably authorizes this) and the Straits 
(29 & 30 Vict. e¢. 115). It could not be done in the Leeward Islands or 
Bahamas, Bermuda, Barbados, British Honduras, or Turk’s Island. 
He only once sat there, in 1825; see Hannay, New Brunswick, i. 407. 
Parl. Pap., H. C. 529, 1864, p. 35.