AUSTRALIA
118
AUSTRALIA
The religious statistics of South Austraha were in the Commonweahh is surpassed in numerical
not tabulated in 1S46, 1851, and 1861. There was strength only by the adherents of the Church of
no enumeration of religious denominations at the England. The following table, compiled from the
Tasmania census of 1881. The figures given below Australian Handbook for 1905, shows the numerica
for that year are an estimate by T. A. Coghlan, strength of the principal religious groups in the dif
Statistician of New South Wales. The Catholic body ferent States at the census of 1901 : —
Religious Denominations
Commonwealth
Church of England
Roman Catholic
Presbyterian
Methodist
Baptist
Congregational Lutheran Salvation Army
Total Population
623,131
347,286
132,617
137,638
16,618
24,834
7.387
9,585
423,914
263,708
191,459
180,263
33,730
17,141
4,078
0,405
7,442
6,574
2,717
S,300
5,170
5,512
106,987
52,193
18,357 90,125 21,764 13,338 26,140 4.030
75,654
41,893
14,707
24,540
3,125
4,404
1,703
1,690
83,815
30,314
11,523
24.999
4,716
5,544
387
1,454
1,497,579
855.799
426,105
504,139
92,670
73,561
74,721
31,100
332,934
167,716
162,752
3,555,674
VI. Education. — For a time all the colonies of
the Australasian group followed the example initiated
by New South Wales in according State aid to the
clergy and the denominational schools of the principal
religious bodies, Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians,
and Methodists. These grants were withdrawn;
at once or by gradually diminishing payments;
by South Australia in 1851, after they had been
in force only three years; by Queensland in 1860;
by New South Wales in 1862; by Tasmania and
Victoria, in 1875, and by Western Australia, in
1895. State grants to denominational schools ceased
when the various secular systems took effect: in
Victoria in 1872; in Queensland, in 1876; in South
Australia, in 1878; in New South Wales, in 1879; and
in Western Australia in 1896. In all the States of
the Commonwealth primary education is com-
pulsory. In Victoria, Queensland, South Australia,
and Western .\ustralia, it is also free. In New South
Wales and Tasmania a small fee is charged, with free
education for children whose parents cannot afford
to pay for them. In Victoria fees are charged for
such extra subjects as book-keeping, shorthand,
Euclid, algebra, Latin, French, etc. Throughout the
Commonwealth the rate of illiteracy is low. "Out
of every 10,000 children between the ages of five and
fifteen, there could read and write in 1861, 4,637;
in 1871, 5,911; 1881, 7,058; 1891, 7,565" (Coghlan
and Ewing, Progress of Australasia in the Nineteenth
Century, p. 455). .\t the cen.sus of 1901, according
to the "Victorian Year-Book" for 1903 (pp. 70-71),
of the children of school age (6 to 13 years) in Victo-
ria. 90.12 per cent were able to read and write; in
Queensland, 84.42 per cent (Australian bom children
only); in Western .\ustralia, 82.05 per cent; in
South Australia, 82.00 per cent; in New South Wales,
80.35 per cent, and in Tasmania, 78.77 per cent.
Hostility to the Catholic Church gave the chief im-
pulse to the secularizing of public instruction in
Victoria and New South Wales. In Victoria Mr.
Stephen, Attorney-General, declared that the new
Act was "to purge the colony of clericalism ", and to
lead the rising generation by sure but gradual steps
to "worship in common at the shrine of one neutral-
tinted deity, sanctioned by the State Department "
(Moran, op. cit., 882-883). In New South Wales
Henry (after«'ards Sir Henry) Parkes was even more
outspoken. Holding aloft his Draft Bill on Public
Instruction, at a public meeting, he said: "I hold
in my hand what will be death to the calling of the
priesthood of the Church of Rome" (Moran, op. cit.,
875). One of the first results of the withdrawal of
the State grants in the various colonics was the clos-
ing of most of the Protestant prini:iry schools. There
was, on the other hand, everywhere a steady in-
crease in the number of Catholic schools. The fol-
lowing figures, taken from official sources, show the
growth of Catholic primary schools in Victoria from
the passing of the secular Education Act till 1897:^
Year
Primary Schools
Children Attending
1881
1891
1897
180
208
226
20,337
21,799
24,066
No official returns appear in the Victorian census
reports for 1901. The following extract from a table
published by T. A. Coghlan (Wealth and Progress
of New South Wales, 1897-98, 762) indicates the
advance made by Catholic primary schools in the
mother-state for twelve years after the date (1882)
at which State assistance was withdrawn from de-
nominational schools: —
Year
Schools
Teachers
Scholars
on Roll
Average
Attendance
1888
1891
1897
247
250
296
916
1,242
1,481
27,172
30,691
36,675
21,809
23,788
29,162
According to official returns, there were 41,112
children on the rolls of the Catholic schools in New
South Wales in the December quarter, 1904, and
5,413 on the rolls of the Catholic schools of Western
Australia on the last school week of 1903 (the latest
Government figures available for that State). No
official information appears in the census or reports
of Tasmania, Queensland, or South Australia. The
"Australasian Catholic Directory" for 1906 made
what seems to be a somewhat conservative estimate
when it set down as 105.835, the number of children
attending Catholic schools throughout the Common-
wealth.
VII. The .Aborigines. — The origin of the native tribes of Australia is one of tlie unsolved riddles of ethnology, .^n unknown number of these black- skinned people still live in their "wild" state, in small and scattered communities, over vast areas extending from Central Queensland almost to the coast of Western Australia. They have no ac- quaintance with metal, nor with the bow and arrow, and their weapons of war and chase are (with the exception of the boomerang) of a very rude kind, wooden spears and clubs, stone tomahawks, etc. They are extraordinarily keen and skilful hunters. They are polygamous, given at times to cannibalism and infanticide, and have no permanent dwellings, no pottery, and no idea of cultivation of the soil. They die out fast wherever they come in contact
