Standing Committee is charged only with the duty of interpreting the canons and deciding any question that may arise of alleged infraction of Canon Law. But a full statement of the financial position of each diocese is laid before General Synod at its triennial session. So far only is it concerned with Diocesan finance.
Many years ago, Bishop Selwyn, who was something of an autocrat, conceived the idea of one general fund for all New Zealand, under the control of General Synod. At the time it chiefly affected the Diocese of Christchurch, which possessed endowments, made by the foresight of the Canterbury Association, of considerable value. Selwyn's scheme met with the unanimous opposition of the Diocesan Synod, and he was obliged to give way. Had it succeeded it might have neutralized Selwyn's own ideal, embodied in our Constitution, of a federation of Dioceses under a General Synod for general legislative purposes, but each Diocese retaining its own proper independence. This was in accordance with the practice of the Church in its early centuries. Each Diocese complete in itself, bishop, clergy, and people; various Dioceses grouped together in Provinces for general legislative purposes,—a practice which prevailed until the gradual usurpation of Diocesan independence by the centralizing dominion of Rome.
I remember a criticism of the Christchurch Synod on this occasion by one of the acutest and best read men in New Zealand, Judge Richmond, given in a spirit of friendly banter: "Ah, I see that down in Canterbury they have discovered that the Diocese is the essential unit of the Church."
In a country like New Zealand, in which endow-
