even been accentuated by the
Canterbury declaration of 1853, in which it was urged that the
ecclesiastical franchise should be confined to persons who should not
only declare themselves communicants of the Church, but should also
disavow membership in any other religious denomination. This stringent
requirement probably arose from an experience which Archdeacon Mathias
mentions in a letter to Lord Lyttelton. Many had come out at the
Association's expense as "Church of England" members, who yet turned out
to be "professed dissenters," and some of them "dissenting preachers."
The religious unity of the settlement was thus rendered impossible, and
one of the aims of its founders defeated at the outset.

On this point therefore--a point of far more importance to the Church
than the property question, which attracted the greater attention at the
time--the bishop would be supported by the missionary clergy and by the
Canterbury representatives. But he met with firm resistance from the
Auckland laymen. These were men of "a fine conservative temperament,"
and they would agree to no proposal which should make the Church in New
Zealand less comprehensive than the State-governed Church of the Mother
Country. Their view is thus expressed by Carleton: The bishop "would
have made the Church of England a close borough, to which formal
admittance under rules prescribed would be required; the laymen, on the
other hand, held that every baptised Englishman enjoyed church
membership as a matter of course and right, until he should think fit to
declare dissent."

Both of these opposing views have much to say for themselves; for both
of them great names may be quoted in support. At the Auckland
Conference, as throughout the whole after-history of our Church, it was
the lay (or Arnoldian) view that triumphed: "The bishop, seeing no
eagerness on the part of the laity, but, on the contrary, much quiet and
thoughtful criticism, gave way upon every main point of difference,
gracefully enough. Failure of cherished schemes had changed him much.
But he was bent upon carrying something, and by gentle management he
did. A scheme of fair working promise, with little to take exception to,
was the result."

The document which was solemnly put forth on June 13th, 1857, as the
"CONSTITUTION for associating together, as a Branch of the United Church
of England and Ireland, the members of the said Church in the Colony of
New Zealand," carried at its foot