1432 AUSTRALASIA ILLUSTRATED. 



cities. These valuable institutions apply themselves to the duty of providing instruction 

 to all who may care to avail themselves of their benefits, in the practical occupations, 

 trades and professions of life. The number of persons who are found to co-operate with 

 the advantages thus offered is a large and ever-increasing one, and the results as shown 

 in the yearly exhibitions of these Technical Schools are in the highest degree encouraging. 



RELIGION. 



THE circumstances attendant on the first steps at Australian colonization were not 

 exactly such as to favour any very marked religious developments, and the settle- 

 ment for some time might have been searched in vain far any very encouraging evidences 

 of this kind. The first minister of religion, it is true, came out as chaplain of the First 

 Fleet, but the conditions of primitive settlement were apparently adverse to the efficacy 

 of his ministrations, for in the early records frequent mention is made of the antagonism 

 of the Rev. Richard Johnson to the official element, and the difficulty he experienced in 

 his endeavours to enlist its interest in the work on which he was engaged. His chief 

 trouble was the building of a church, in which task he vainly sought the Governor's 

 assistance. The usual reply t.o his solicitations was to the effect that the housing of 

 the population and stores claimed first attention. He therefore undertook, after a time, 

 to build a church himself, and in 1 793 he opened a small building for Divine Service 

 on the east side of Sydney Cove. This primitive structure was built of wattle and 

 plaster, and covered with thatch. It was seventy-three feet long by fifteen feet wide, 

 and had a transept measuring forty feet by fifteen feet. Little sympathy subsisted 

 between the chaplain and the officials, it would seem, for the former is reported as 

 preaching a sermon after the arrival of Governor Hunter to relieve the temporary 

 military Administrators of the Government in which he denounced in no measured 

 terms the extortion and debauchery of the officers, whom he accused of driving the 

 settlement to ruin by charging twelve hundred per cent, for the . goods they retailed. 

 The chaplain left the colony in 1802, having amassed a considerable fortune by agricul- 

 ture. The same year that saw the erection of Mr. Johnson's church witnessed the 

 laying of the foundation stone of the first St. Philip's Church, Sydney ; and in the 

 following year the Rev. Samuel Marsden came to the colony, where he continued to 

 be connected with the development of the denomination to which he belonged for 

 upwards of sixty years. The Church of England remained the only recognized State 

 Church of New South Wales up to the time of Governor Bourke that is to say, 1833. 

 The ministers were, like Samuel Marsden, usually civil magistrates as well, and some 







strange stories are told of the effect of this novel combination of offices in a penal 

 settlement. Some order was introduced into the religious system of the infant settlement 

 in 1825, when the Church and School Corporation was established by Royal Charter, 

 under which one-seventh of the whole of the lands of the colony were set aside in 

 perpetuity for the purposes of religion and education in connection with the Church of 

 England. In the same year the Rev. Thomas Hobbes Scott was appointed the* first 

 Archdeacon of Australia, and from this time the religious interest in the colony may be 

 said to have been definitely established. The corporation lasted only until 1833, when 



