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strongest arguments against the expediency of compiling an independent Irish Prayer Book at this particular crisis. I beg you to note the word expediency, for it does not require the precedents of Scotland and of the United States to prove the right of the Irish Church, as of any other independent Church, to frame its own formularies for itself. That right would exist with the same intrinsic vigour whether or not the Churches in those two lands had previously exercised it. But expediency, while drawing its teachings from precedent, ultimately rests upon the res nata; and so wherever the res nata finds itself illustrated by precedent, the argument of expediency is most strong and convincing. The special Scottish Communion office (the forms of Morning and Evening Prayer, being identical with those of the English Prayer Book), is a modified form of that which the Scotch Bishops framed for their Church on the reintroduction of Episcopacy during the reign of Charles I., when Scotland was still a separate kingdom, only united with England by the personal tie of having the same Sovereign, with different Parliament, different laws, almost different language. On the second reintroduction of Episcopacy in Scotland by Charles II., no authorised Prayer Book was enjoined upon the country, and the Formulary was only adopted in its present altered shape by the Bishops of the Scottish Episcopal Church after their misplaced devotion to the house of Stuart had not only lost them the favour of William III., and their chance of preserving their established status, but had subjected them and their community to long and aggravated trials of spoliation and persecution. When at length the days of toleration arrived, a concurrent use of the English Prayer Book, in its entirety, was conceded by the Scottish Episcopal Church; and any subsequent change has been to the advantage of the status in quo of the English Formulary, and to the disadvantage of the indigenous one. It is manifest that the