introduced into New South Wales. So long as they had supported a "Common" system of public education—"free" and "compulsory"—the people would not have insisted on its being "secular." They, in fact, only did so in despair, finding it impossible to get the religious leaders to do anything but blindly oppose what their own instinct of self-preservation told them was essential to the salvation of the State. Had the two worthy and eminent prelates I have named cordially supported the movement, they could have dictated their own terms as to the State school curriculum, and they would have earned the undying gratitude of all right-thinking patriotic men in the colonies, and would have done much, without the change by a hair's-breadth of an article or formulary of their creed, to make their Church the Church of Australia.
It may not unnaturally be asked by an attentive English student of Australian affairs, whether this system of free, secular, and compulsory education is not likely, sooner or later, to be overthrown. The fact that a large and organised minority, controlled by vigilant ecclesiastical leaders, is opposed to the State schools, is certainly a fact not to be overlooked or lightly considered. I will frankly concede that
