In the autumn of 1782, one year after the surrender of Lord
Cornwallis at Yorktown--an event which practically settled the
question of the independence of the thirteen colonies--the Rev.
Dr. George Berkeley, a son of that great prelate who sang of the
"westward course of empire," addressed a letter to Bishop Skinner,
coadjutor to the Primus of the Scottish Church, suggesting that
the bishops of Scotland should consecrate a bishop for America,
and saying, "had my honored father's scheme for planting an
Episcopal College, whereof he was to have been president, in the
Summer Islands, not been sacrificed by the worst minister that
Britain ever saw, probably under a mild monarch (who loves the
Church of England as much as I believe his grandfather hated it)
Episcopacy would have been established in America by a succession
from the English Church, unattended by any invidious temporal rank
or power."

No doubt the question thus proposed to the Scottish bishops was
carefully considered, but the result was unfavorable to Dr.
Berkeley's wishes. Bishop Skinner wrote: "Nothing can be done in
the affair with safety on our side, till the independence of
America be fully and irrevocably recognized by the government of
Britain; and even then the enemies of our Church might make a
handle of our correspondence with the colonies as a proof that we
always wished to fish in troubled waters, and we have little need
to give any ground for an imputation of this kind,"

No one who recalls the frightful provisions of the penal acts of
Parliament passed in 1746 and 1748, which were plainly intended to
annihilate the Scottish Church, and were unrepeated when Bishop
Skinner wrote the words just quoted, can wonder at the hesitation