CHAPTER XXVII.
RELIGION, EDUCATION, LAW.
THE provisions made for the promotion of religion and education are nearly the same in New South Wales and Victoria, having been finally settled before the two provinces were divided. In South Australia the system of the old colony seems to have been taken as a model. In all three colonies the law is, with a few local exceptions, the same.
We have already mentioned the circumstances under which a bishop was appointed in New South Wales. By the munificence of Miss Burdett Coutts a bishopric was endowed in South Australia; this led to the appointment of a bishop of Melbourne, and perhaps to the creation of the second bishopric in New South Wales, the diocese of Newcastle, which extends to the northward, the residence being at Morpeth.
The assistance afforded to the building of churches and the support of religious ministers in New South Wales and Port Phillip is at present regulated by the act passed by Sir Richard Bourke, described at page 109.
By an act of the Legislative Council of South Australia, passed 3rd of August, 1847, for promoting the building of Christian churches and chapels, public money was issued, under the sanction of the governor and Executive Council, in proportion to the amount of private contributions; the grants in aid of building to range from 50 to 150, and toward the stipends of clergy and ministers from 50 to 200 a year. One-fourth of the sittings in places of worship so assisted must be free.
The Congregationalists and Baptists have always refused to receive aid from the state; and there exists in the three colonies, especially in South Australia, a party opposed to all state assistance to religion. In our opinion, although religion and education may be sustained in towns with a large floating population by the voluntary system, the inhabitants of the interior, without government assistance, will remain to a great extent in a state of practical heathendom altogether, without the advantage of religious rites and ordinances. The state of life in the bush is, or ought to be, patriarchal: churches are an impossibility: every father must be the pastor of his family. To establish the voluntary system is to decree that the long lines of rivers shall never be visited by a minister of religion.
