1'OUTICAL AND SOCHI.. 



'433 



it was dissolved by Order in Council, the trust reverting to Government, and a system 

 was introduced under which every religious denomination represented in the colony was to 

 receive support in proportion to its numerical strength. Bitter complaints had been made 

 from time to time by the adherents of other religions, of the injustice of recognizing 

 only one church in the colony, and of subsidizing that one by a heavy tax on tin- 

 whole of the community for the expenses of church administration were chargeable from 

 year to year against the Treasury, until the land-grants became reproductive while the 

 others were left at the mercy of the official whim of the hour. The liberal and politic 

 spirit of Bourke was not slow to perceive the anomalous nature of the existing arrange- 

 ment. He drew up a 

 despatch for the infor- 

 mation of the Secretary 

 of State for the Colo- 

 nies, Lord Stanley, in 

 which he set forth the 

 facts of the whole 

 question as it offered 



itself to his own judg- 1 B I- 



ment. After dwelling 

 on the expediency and 

 necessity for the pro- 

 motion of religion and 

 good Government, that 

 the State should extend 



its countenance and support to the dispensation of the ordinances of religion, he went on 

 to lay down the following principles : That the State aid should be administered so as 

 not to render ministers of religion independent of their people ; that the exclusive 

 endowment of any one body of professing Christians was impracticable ; that instead of 

 extending State aid to one Church, and casual assistance to two or three others, it was 

 expedient to extend the countenance of the Government to all the Churches indiscrimi- 

 nately. He then proceeded to offer a detailed suggestion as to the way State aid 

 should be administered in future. At that date the Church of England received ,11,542 

 per annum, the Catholic body ,1,500, and the Presbyterian communion ,600. Bourke 

 now proposed to give a contribution to every church building in the colony, propor- 

 tionate to the amount publicly subscribed, and to appropriate salaries to ministers 

 of religion proportionate to the size of their congregations. Two years were allowed 

 to pass before any reply was forthcoming to this State Paper of Governor Bourke, and 

 in the meantime Lord Stanley had been succeeded at the Colonial Office by Lord 

 Glenelg. One of the first acts of that official's authority was to accept these recommen- 

 dations of Sir Richard Bourke, and the State Church of Australia soon became, practi- 

 cally, a thing of the past. The public appreciation of Bourke's Administration took the 

 form of a statue, which now stands as an 'historic land-mark in the Sydney Domain. 



The account thus given of what was done in the early days represents what, in the 

 judgment of the mother-country, was the religious policy best suited to these young 



I'lIIl.1 1' s i iRK;i NAI. (lll'KCll, s\li.\l.\. 



