There were to be diocesan boards to appoint the clergy, whose maintenance was to be provided by the Diocesan Synods, partly from endowment funds, and partly by voluntary contributions. This was a principle dear to Bishop Selwyn’s heart, which he had advocated ever since he came to New Zealand. The discipline of the clergy was to be in the hands of a Tribunal appointed by the Diocesan Synod and presided over by the Bishop. The electors to the Synods were to be those who declared themselves willing to obey the laws of the Synod, its members must be communicants. He then described what would be the duties of the Synods. Finally he dwelt upon their responsibilities for the native races in New Zealand and Melanesia, and on the urgent need to raise up a native ministry. He rejoiced over the faithful men who had already been ordained, but said it was impossible not to feel some doubts as to the future stability of the native Church. He said: “My recent journey through the Mission Stations has left me in a balanced state between hope and fear”; fear caused by the signs of decaying faith, and by the fact that the native youth were “departing from the example of their fathers, given to self-indulgence, drunkenness and sloth.” He was convinced that the time was coming when it would “be found impossible to carry on a double government for the Colonial and the Missionary Church,” but their blending must be a gradual work though it should be begun immediately. It was with great thankfulness that he told the Synod of the formation of the new missionary diocese of Waiapu for the Southern Island, to which he hoped to consecrate Archdeacon William Williams. “One whose age and experience had often made him feel ashamed that he should have been preferred before him.” The three new Bishops of Christchurch, Wellington and Nelson, who had been appointed in England, were present at the Synod and joined with him at its close in consecrating William Williams, who was thus the first Bishop to be consecrated in New Zealand. Selwyn wrote of this to a friend: “I wish that you could have been present to see our little church at the Antipodes, represented by its four Eton Bishops, lighting a fifth candlestick to be a light to lighten our native Christians. The new Bishop was already at his work in New Zealand while I was still a boy at Eton; and though a veteran, who might have claimed some relaxation of his work, has just pulled down a comfortable house at his mission station to remove to a wild tract of uncultivated land, and there begin again the first perturbations of a native school for the purpose of training up the New Zealand youth to take their place in the new order of things.”