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finally decided by the Metropolitan Court of the province, unless the supreme judicial authority of the ancient Court of Delegates, or the present Court of Privy Council, could be transferred to a Court of Convocation—answering to the House of Lords, as a Court of ultimate appeal.
There need be but a single Archiepiscopal Court in each Province, in which I also propose that the ancient system of written depositions and plea and proof shall be abolished, and all suits heard and decided summarily, upon vivâ voce evidence, as in our Courts of common law,—the Archbishop, or his deputy, being Judge.
In these Supreme Provincial Courts it would probably be advisable to have an ecclesiastical Judge entirely conversant with the Canon law, and, for this reason, the Archbishop would require as deputy an experienced Canonist, nominated to that post by himself. There is no absolute necessity for such deputies in the Courts held before the Bishops and Archdeacons. Originally each Bishop seems to have been the supreme ecclesiastical judge in his diocese, and I see no reason why, when questions of civil rights are removed from the Church tribunals, the Bishops and Archdeacons should not resume their functions of presiding in person over causes ecclesiastical. The amount of legal knowledge required in these courts, when all questions of a civil nature are removed from them, would not be greater than the common-law knowledge required
