1444 THE CHURCH IN THE DOMINIONS [PART viI
any interference of the Crown, which has no direct concern
 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 completely
 changed on the introduction of responsible government,
 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 (conguered
 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.