This arrangement, however, did not provide for appeals generated by the decisions of the colonial courts. An application was made to allow the colonial presbyteries representatives in the general assembly. This measure would have embarrassed a national church, and thus (1834) the general assembly repudiated an appellate jurisdiction. In various forms Colonel Snodgrass, while acting lieutenant governor, expressed an interest in the church of his native country. He called a synod of ministers, elders, and delegates, by proclamation, to be held at Hobart Town, to effect the settlement of the church, and thus to prepare the way for its endowment. Many, favorable to the object, doubted the legality of the meeting, and the power of any officer to proclaim the assembling of a body not recognised by the legislative council. The presbyterians, however, maintained that they were qualified to act under convocation by the crown, independently of parliamentary or local legislative sanction--that the meeting or synod only prepared the preliminaries antecedent to the intervention of law. At the time appointed the synod met: in the meantime Sir John Franklin was advised that the proclamation of Snodgrass was irregular; he therefore sent his private secretary, Captain Maconochie, to request the assembly to stay proceedings, with an intimation of his friendly consideration of their claims. They, however, considered that to disperse would compromise their rights, and therefore chose a moderator. At this stage, a counter proclamation, hastily prepared, was brought by a messenger from the governor, and the convocation dissolved. However conclusive this reasoning to Scotchmen, the Anglicans were little disposed to admit its force. They asserted that the faith of the sovereign was the imperial faith, and that it was within the competence of the British legislature to set up an exclusive establishment of their clergy. The usual argument against the universal equality of the Scots' national church, was the fact that the laws of England, and not the laws of Scotland, were binding in the colonies.[218] To this it was replied, that treaties, on which the imperial legislative power was founded, were the limits of its action; and that the ascendancy of English law in the colonies of Australia depended on a parliamentary enactment passed by the representatives of Scotland; subject, however, to the restrictions of the treaties in virtue of which Scotchmen were contented to sit on the benches of Saint Stephen.[219] Archdeacon Hutchins denied that either treaty or law prohibited a preferable claim, and remarked that "opening the door to two co-existing establishments would shortly admit others, and thus prepare for the destruction of all."