man.'*

the Church of England until the year 1837, and none authorised and recommended by the governor of the colony until after the passing of the new act, viz., in November 1836; and in England that circumstance took place which was noticed in the report of the Diocesan Committee before referred to, viz., the return of the Bishop of Australia to his charge in 1836, without an additional clergyman; which was owing (state the committee) to the refusal of his Majesty's Government to sanction any allowance towards the expense of the passage, or procuring a residence or means of support for any additional clergyFrom these circumstances, it would indeed almost appear as if it had been the intention, if not the recommendation, of the Colonial Government not to increase the establishment of the Church of England until each of these other churches should have arrived at an equality with it in every respect. Each was considerably advanced towards that equality, but especially the Roman Catholic, before the plan of the Colonial Government for the future ecclesiastical establishment was promulgated in the colony. In the estimates for 1834 and 1835, the clergymen of the Church of England only exceeded the numbers of the Roman Catholic and Presbyterian clergy together, by four; in the estimates for 1836, their united numbers were actually equal to those of the Church of England; and they possessed an advantage over the latter in the fact, that the newly-introduced clergymen of both churches were younger men, and in the case of the Roman Catholics under the jurisdiction of a Bishop."

Not only was the Church of England thus impeded in her progress by the neglect of the Government, but "a heavy blow and great discouragement" was actually aimed against her existence by those who ought to have upheld her by every means in their power. Carrying out the designs of the Government which founded the colony, and made provision for the assignment of four hundred acres for a glebe, and two hundred acres for a school in every township, the Ministers of the Crown, in the year 1826, advised his Majesty King George IV. to erect into a corporation the leading officers of the colony, together with the Archdeacon and a certain number of chaplains; and vested in them all the lands set apart in the colony, for the purposes of education, and for the maintenance of the clergy; and, likewise, enjoined the governor

"To set apart in each and every county, hundred, &c. into which the colony might be divided, a tract of land comprising one-seventh part in extent and value of all the lands in each and every such county, to be thenceforward called and known by the name of the clergy and school estates of such county, and the governor was directed to make to the corporation grants thereof."

The Ecclesiastical Corporation thus formed was admirably

* Report of the Diocesan Committee of the Societies for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and for Promoting Christian Knowledge, for 1837.

calculated to answer the purposes designed in the royal charter. Had the provisions of the charter been honestly carried into effect, at this moment the religious condition of the colony, as to the efficiency of the establishment, would have resembled that of our own country. In every township there would have been a minister of the Gospel, with a fair, though not inadequate remuneration, independent for the means of support of those among whom he ministered, doing his duty zealously and fearlessly, and diffusing around him the blessings of the Gospel. There would have been likewise a school, in which the young would have been religiously trained in the sound principles of Christianity taught by our Church. The colonial treasury would have been relieved of a considerable annual payment; and, without taxing one single individual, ample revenues would have been provided for the Church-revenues increasing with the increased population, and enabling the spirit of religion and the spirit of worldly enterprise, to go hand in hand into the wastes of Australia. Such a picture, however, it did not suit the enemies of the Church to contemplate with pleasure. Accord ingly, every obstacle was thrown in the way of the corporation ; the lands which were theirs by royal charter were studiously withheld, or when granted, were studiously allotted in the worst situations, and the least available for agricultural purposes. It is notorious that not one-seventh in quantity, much less in value, was at any time assigned them.

But though thus deprived of that power which the royal bounty had made, on the corporation was thrown the whole expense of maintaining the existing clergy and schools. With an honest determination of purpose to fulfil the trust confided to them, the trustees were induced to sell a portion of the glebes which had been assigned to the clergy some years before; they thus, unwisely we think, sacrificed the future to the present, and the result has been that the Church has been despoiled of that which was hers of undoubted right.

While struggling with difficulties such as these, and every day more and more surmounting them by an unwearied perseverance -seeing more clearly the probability of effecting the objects for which they were incorporated, without intimation of any kind that their proceedings were disapproved of by the Government at home-the trustees suddenly received a notice that their functions were to cease, that the charter was to be revoked, and that their lands and property were to revert to the Crown. This revocation of the charter took place while Sir George Murray was Secretary for the Colonies; and we believe it is the boast of Dr.

Lang, a Presbyterian clergyman, that by his meddling inter

ference the act of revocation was effected.

The folly of this act of the Government is only to be exceeded by its iniquity. On the faith of the charter, many persons had given money, flocks, and herds, to the corporation: they were now all swept away into the colonial treasury; or rather, we should say, a considerable proportion put into the pocket of the government collector.

"It was an object of the corporation, by the quiet and unexpensive increase of these, to create a revenue in aid of their other assets: and there is no doubt that, under similar management, they would have become as profitable to them, as similar stock was at the same period to other proprietors in the colony. It was the interest of the agent, however, by a speedy sale, to increase the amount of the per centage, upon which his emoluments mainly depended; and this he proceeded to do in a mode which shows him to have been fully impressed with the value of turning them into money; and they were all disposed of by public auction between the 1st of January, 1834, and the 28th of March, 1837, the wool and stock together having realised, between these dates, the sum of not less than £16,539 10 81

"The proceeds collected by him between these dates, and for rents of lands

4,279 11 5

53

£20,819 2 2"

It is a singular circumstance in the whole proceeding that the charter was annulled without reference to the trustees, or any inquiry as to its working and efficiency. Secrecy seems to have been the policy of the Colonial Office; and the desire appears to have been, that no remonstrance should be offered, no information given, which might shake the purpose of the Colonial Secretary. We cannot acquit Sir George Murray in this instance of unfairness to the Church, and of yielding to the undue influence of its enemies.

"The notification of the Right Honourable Secretary of State's (then Sir George Murray) counsel to his Majesty to revoke the letters patent by which the corporation had been created, was conveyed to the Governor of New South Wales in a despatch dated 28th of May, 1829, (No. 213), and it is not a little remarkable that Archdeacon Broughton, who sailed from England the day after that despatch bore date, having been, on the resignation of Archdeacon Scott, appointed Archdeacon of New South Wales, and, as such, vice-president of the corporation, and having been in constant communication with the Colonial Office during the four preceding months, left England in entire ignorance of the existence of any intention to revoke the charter. He arrived in New South Wales on the 15th of September in the same year, and immediately entered upon his duties as vice-president of the

corporation; and on the 4th of December, the tenor of the above dispatch, suspending the further proceedings of the corporation, was communicated." p. 38.

Well, the enemies of the Church having succeeded thus far; first in stopping the supply of clergymen, and then in robbing them of their property, speedily and vigorously followed up their victory. There was now no longer a colonial governor in whose breast the welfare of the Church was a predominant feeling: Governor Darling had fulfilled his term, and had been succeeded by Governor Bourke. The charter had contained a clause which empowered its revocation. So far the proceeding was legal, though it was not just. The next attack upon the Church had not, however, this poor excuse to cover its glaring injustice -it was as illegal as it was inexpedient. It was no less than the attempt to deprive the Church of England of her supremacy, and by a local act of the Governor and Council of New South Wales to do that which it is hardly competent for the Imperial Legislature to do! It was, to use the words of Mr. Burton, "a revolution in the constitutional principles on which the colony of New South Wales had been founded." Mr. Burton argues the case clearly and convincingly; he fully demonstrates that the Church was by law the Established Church of New South Wales, and could not be other than the Established Church of that colony except by an act of the Imperial Parliment.

There can be no doubt whatever that the Church of England was by law the Established Church of New South Wales, and that notwithstanding Sir Richard Bourke's local act, she still continues so; and that, consequently, when between Lord Glenelg and Sir Richard Bourke the transaction which we are about to detail took place, they were guilty of an unconstitutional exercise of the authority vested in them. As regards Sir Richard Bourke, it is impossible not to observe a rancorous hostility to the Church and Clergy of the Church of England; from the general tenor of his dispatch, as well as from particular passages of it, we see a spirit at work internally, and an influence pressing him externally, essentially hostile to the Church. We regret to say that the evidence on which he rests his case in his statement to Lord Glenelg is made for the occasion. He alleges a general complaint as existing against the Church of England in the colony, and talks of a petition which has been presented to him, emanating from a public meeting, numerously signed. Now what is the inference which Sir Richard wished Lord Glenelg to draw from hence? Why that it would be a popular act in the colony to overthrow the Established Church! And that public opinion in New South Wales was so adverse to the continuance of the

Church, that public meetings were being held, and that agitation and excitement were rife upon the subject. Sir Richard concealed from the Secretary of State the facts that the petition (and the meeting from which it proceeded) was got up by his own partizans for this specific purpose; that though it might be numerously, it was not respectably signed; that on the contrary, with a very few exceptions, no respectable man in Sydney had signed it; but that the scum and refuse of a convict population, and those who favoured their most unwarrantable pretensions, AMONG WHOM Sir Richard was at that moment seeking his popularity, were the persons by whom, and by whom alone, the complaint, which he represents as "general," was made. The petition and the signatures Sir Richard did not dare to lay before the council; no inquiry was made into the truth of its allegations; and yet he uses it as an argument with the Secretary of State in favour of his new scheme for placing all religions, true or false, on the same footing! And had the petition emanated from the respectable classes in Sydney, had it been as respectably signed as notoriously it was otherwise, what a ground for a legislator to found his acts upon? Mere popular feeling, the clamour of the moment, an interested clamour, got up for a party purpose! Lord Stanley, who preceded Lord Glenelg in the Colonial, Office, treated Sir Richard and his dispatch as they deserved, with silent but marked contempt. For two whole years it lay unnoticed in the archives of the Colonial Office. At length, however, the hour arrived for its re-production into light. Voluntaryism in religion was rampantly exhibiting itself in England, and the time was propitious for Government to manifest to their friends and supporters, that though they acknowledged the preamble to be good, they could not yet carry it out at home, but that in the colonies they were willing to give it a trial. We are quite sure that some intimation of the intention of Government was afforded to the Roman Catholics, for as soon as Sir Richard Bourke's local act was passed they were prepared to take immediate advantage of its provisions; while, on the other hand, the Church of England had to await an interval of many months before steps could be taken with the same view. It is amusing, in the correspondence between Sir Richard Bourke and Lord Glenelg, to observe the tone of congratulation and self-satisfaction which pervades both parties. They laud themselves on anticipation of the excellency and wisdom of their plan and seem to think that their names would be handed down to posterity as having first broken through the trammels of prejudice in favour of an Established Church, and laid the foundation of religion in New South Wales on the