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supervision and made the recipients of the rewards of ten States.
A consideration, the force of which it requires but a small ac-
quaintance with human nature to enable us to appreciate.

As to the advantages the Church as such in the Southern dioceses
would derive from a union in such enterprises, you will have al-
ready anticipated them, at least in part. As things now stand,
each diocese is thrown upon its own resources. We have no means
of drawing strength directly from each other. We enjoy, it is
true, all the privileges guaranteed to the rest of the dioceses of
our national Church—privileges which I trust we shall be ever
foremost to appreciate and last to cease to value and main-
tain—but it is notoriously within the experience of us all that
among these, there are some of a character apparently secondary,
which are nevertheless available for great good, of which we are
virtually deprived. I allude to the advantages of conference, of
interchange of opinion with regard to our common work, of ex-
change of sympathy and the refreshing influence of Christian inter-
course, afforded by the easy access open to those near the centres {sp}
of our national ecclesiastical operations, and offered by the anniver-
sary of meetings of our national institutions and societies. From
these we are substantially debarred. We may afford to make so
great a journey once in three years, out of consideration for the
grave interests committed to our care in the General Convention,
but our distance is too great to warrant our doing so for less ob-
jects as often as once a year. Our opportunity of obtaining
benefit from such reunions is thus lost to us, and we are deprived
of that power of usefulness to others which is the result of com-
bined action.

These opportunities and powers would be secured us by the
gatherings at the annual commencements of our Provincial Semina-
ries. Bishops, clergymen and laymen drawn together by an interests
in the proficiency of children or wards—members of the several
schools—or by an independent Christian interest in the success of
institutions, founded by themselves for the glory of God and the
good of men, or by the further object of meeting brethren, with a
view of engaging in plans for the cultivation of piety in their own
hearts—or promoting or establishing it in the hearts of others,
would find large compensation for the privations they are now
compelled to endure. And from these meetings to say nothing of
the intellectual and moral power to be drawn annually from the
seminaries themselves, through the graduating classes in all

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departments, we might expect an amount of influence for the
cause of Christ, which would be felt throughout every ramification
of the Southern Church.

The establishment of a press attached to the schools of instruc-
tion, especially adapted to our field, for the defense and main-
tenance of our distinctive principles, and as a medium of communi-
cating with our dioceses, would follow after as a thing of course;
as would also the presenting to such families as desired it, a high,
healthy retreat for themselves, with access to a cultivated and
religious society, during the education of their children.

It will be perceived I have included in the contemplated
arrangements no diocese north of North Carolina, Tennessee or
Arkansas. My only reason for not extending the invitation to
others beyond that line in our immediate neighborhood, is, that
while those South of it are without any provision of the kind pro-
posed, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, etc., have institutions of their
own, which they have established and in which they are already
pledged. I supposed, therefore, there was small hope of interesting
them in an enterprise for which they had no occasion. Should they
for any reason be disposed now or hereafter to unite in our plans,
we would of course cheerfully accept their co-operation and share
with them their benefits.

Should the views I have thus respectfully submitted, find such
favor with you as to entitle them to your consideration, and that of
those whom you represent, I would suggest the time of meeting of
the ensuing General Convention, as a suitable one at which to
have a personal conference for further discussion. And should it be
thought advisable to avail at once of the opinions of the clergy
and laity of our dioceses, we would find doubtless in the clerical
and lay delegates representing those dioceses, then present, a fair
representation of their respective bodies generally.

My idea would be, should the proposal be acceptable, that the
institutions to be formed be committed to the care of a Board of
Trustees, to be composed of the Bishops ex-officio of the dioceses
uniting, and of a number, to be agreed upon, of the clergy and
laity of said dioceses, to be elected from time to time by the several
diocesan conventions. This Board to have full power and authority
to organize, establish and provide for the administration of the
institutions to be founded, in such way and upon such a scale as
they might think proper.

A cardinal principle in the whole movement would of course be,
that the institutions would be declaredly out and out Episcopal,