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This leads me to the consideration of the Ecclesiastical tribunals in which controverted questions of liability to repair must still be decided. For, agreeing as I do, with the Solicitor-General and Mr. Collier in thinking that no time should be lost in abolishing the 372 corrupt Ecclesiastical Courts, which are a disgrace to a civilized country, I feel that there will still exist the necessity of certain courts as the basis of the concordat between the temporal and spiritual Church of England. The State will have ceased, it is true, to recognize those Courts as Courts of the land, but she may still acknowledge them as the ecclesiastical tribunals of that corporate body—that Imperium in Imperio—the Church of England.
I propose, therefore, that Archdeacons, Bishops and Archbishops shall respectively hold ecclesiastical courts as heretofore. There is no reason why the Archdeacon should not sit in person to hear and decide summarily upon ecclesiastical questions arising within his Archdeaconry. For questions of fact he might be required by the parties to empannel a jury of five persons, either clerks or laics, as the case might be. Upon points of ecclesiastical law an appeal should lie, in certain cases, to the Bishop's Court, which might also be reconstituted upon a County Court model, with summary jurisdiction. From this Diocesan Court there need be no further appeal, excepting upon questions of law certified by the Bishop, and such appeal should be
