1789] ^EV. WILLIAM SMITH, D. D. 283 



The Right Rev. Dr. Samuel Seabury, Bishop of the Protestant Epis- 

 copal Church in Connecticut, attended, to confer with the Convention, 

 agreeable to the invitation given him, in consequence of a resolve 

 passed at their late session; and the Rev. Dr. Samuel Parker, Deputy 

 from the Churches in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and the Rev. 

 Mr. Bela Hubbard and the Rev. Mr. Abraham Jarvis, Deputies from 

 the Church in Connecticut, produced testimonials of their appointment 

 to confer with the Convention, in consequence of a similar invitation. 



On the next day a Committee, of which Dr. Smith was the 

 Chairman, was appointed to confer with the Deputies from the 

 Eastern Churches on the subject of a proposed union with those 

 Churches. 



The reader will remember that one principal ground of opposi- 

 tion by Bishop Seabury and his friends to a union was the pro- 

 vision in the General Ecclesiastical Constitution made by the Con- 

 vention of 1785, which made the Convention consist of but a sin- 

 gle House or Chamber, and made a Bishop but a member of a 

 Deputation sent from his State. Bishop Seabury and his friends 

 desired that the Bishops should form an independent House with 

 power completely to negative the action of the laity, if laymen were 

 to vote in the councils of the Church at all, as the churches in 

 Pennsylvania and elsewhere South absolutely insisted that they 

 should do. 



The negotiation required great self-control, firmness and insinua- 

 tion, with dispositions to conciliate, and readiness to yield in all mat- 

 ters where concessions could be safely made. Dr. Smith, if old 

 John Adams' account of him, already quoted by us, be correct, was 

 eminently suited for the diplomatist of the Convention.* He met 

 the Right Reverend and the Reverend gentlemen of the North, 

 and things were made harmonious. On Friday, October 2d, 1789, 

 he reported as follows : 



That they have had a full, free and friendly conference with the deputies 

 of the said Churches, who, on behalf of the Church in their several 

 States, and by virtue of sufficient authority from them, have signified 

 that they do not object to the Constitution which was approved at the 

 former session of this Convention, if the third article of that Constitu- 

 tion may be so modified as to declare explicitly the right of the Bishops, 



* See our Vol. I., p. 334. Adams characterizes him as "soft, polite, insinuating, 

 adulating, sensible, learned, industrious, indefatigable." 



