op himself was well aware of this necessity. We have seen how he
tried to bind the missionaries to himself by calling them together in
synods in 1844 and in 1847. The canons which were passed by these
gatherings were doubtless of some importance, but their chief value lay
in the spirit of _unity_ which they were calculated to evoke.

Legitimate and natural, however, as such gatherings must seem to us,
they threw the Committee of the Church Missionary Society into
"transports of alarm." In England the synodical action of the Church had
been so long silenced, that any attempt to revive it was regarded as an
act of priestly assumption, and an affront to the supremacy of the royal
power. But Selwyn's action was only a little in advance of the time. In
all the colonies, men were feeling after some form of church government
by which laws could be made and unity preserved. The bishops were sent
out from the mother Church with Royal Letters Patent, which seemed to
confer upon their holders almost absolute power, but the colonies
possessed no machinery by which this power could be enforced; and it was
evident that some method must be devised by which the different members
of the Church could be brought together, and enabled to make laws for
its governance and well-being.

The method followed by Bishop Selwyn was that which he derived from the
primitive Church. The bishop and his clergy formed a "synod" which could
enact "canons" for the regulation of the faithful. But something more
was evidently needed; and this, too, seemed to spring into existence in
the memorable year 1850, which marked in so many ways the turn of the
tide in the New Zealand Church.

The self-same month which witnessed the departure of Henry Williams from
Paihia, beheld his great antagonist, Sir George Grey, laid upon a bed of
sickness at New Plymouth. There is no absolute proof that the
archdeacon's case was consciously before the governor's mind, though it
is hard to think that it was not. But it is certain that his thoughts
were drawn at this juncture to the question of the government and unity
of the Church. As Bishop Selwyn put it long afterwards: "There was
something more touching in the origin of that constitution than persons
are generally aware of. The first draft of the present constitution was
drawn by Sir George Grey on a sick bed at Taranaki; and it was the fruit
of those feelings which come upon the mind in sickness, when a man sets
aside tho