Let us come to the actual law and system of the Church. Laymen, consistently with the order of the Church, purchase or inherit, and appoint to benefices; and afterwards the Bishop inducts. This is in no small degree analogous to granting the means for, and consenting to, the nomination of Curates to the Bishops for licence. Corporate bodies, as the Haberdashers’ or Goldsmiths’ Company, without a Clergyman among them, exercise the right of patronage over livings in their gift. The Trustees of new Churches or Chapels, commonly laymen, upon providing a certain endowment, obtain Episcopal consecration for their edifices, and exercise the whole right of selecting and appointing Ministers, to be afterwards licensed by the Bishop; the consecration of their wealth to the Church entitling them, I suppose, in the Church’s view, to this privilege of nomination in return. The parties I have specified make election according to their views of Clergymen or applicants, their doctrine and manner of life. Nobody has ever objected to it, as far as I know at least, as inconsistent with the present order of our Church. Late Acts of Parliament are enlarging the facilities by which the Laity erect and endow Churches upon consideration of the selection and nomination of Ministers being in their own hands. If it were possible that the Church Pastoral-Aid Society, by the exercise of a simple _veto_ upon the nomination of Curates to fill its grants, should endanger the Church,—what if its object were changed, its funds invested in Church property, and it had in its hands _the whole appointment_ to as many livings as could be purchased with its annual income; that is, of Incumbents, and Curates too, virtually;—a proceeding against which no one would have a right to complain, or power to act, as contrary to the principles of the Church?—If a Society may consistently with the laws of the Church appoint to livings, why may it not exercise a negative voice in Curacies? If it may do the greater, why may it not do the less?—The Church Pastoral-Aid Society asks for no right to nominate or appoint, but only, that, in any appointment made by others to the benefit of its grants, the Society should be satisfied that what it gives is not, as we have seen it might be, unworthily bestowed. Is this more than the Church is in the habit of allowing, in return for the consecration of wealth to God; or is it less? Dr. Molesworth is very sore on the subject of the _veto_. P. 15, he asserts that the retention of it makes the nomination, engagement, &c., promised to the Incumbent, “a _mere bubble_.” Suppose, then, that the _veto_ has been exercised as one in ten, or one in twenty, (I speak in entire ignorance of the real proportion,) would Dr. Molesworth affirm, that in the cases where the Incumbent’s domination has been accepted at once, the _veto_ nevertheless proves those nominations to be a bubble? The nature of a _veto_ is well