SQUATTER0-MA8TIX 169 



condemned the methods of the missionaries. He con- 

 demned still more sternly the action of the missionaries 

 in taking possession, for a nominal equivalent, of large 

 tracts of native lands, and when he arrived in England 

 he pubhshed his condemnation in scathing language. 

 He no less condemned the proposed colonisation of the 

 Islands by the newly formed New Zealand Company, 

 and in his first important publication he outlined a large 

 scheme of national colonisation. 



Returning by way of America, he paid a visit to the 

 United States. There, in a country that was once oc- 

 cupied by a group of British colonies, he saw churches 

 of all denominations thriving on voluntary support. 

 He was promptly converted to a belief in the dises- 

 tabhshment of the Church. He was not a man to conceal 

 conclusions that he had arrived at, and, in a volume on 

 Religion and Education in America, he stated his views 

 so trenchantly as to give great offence to churchmen in 

 both Austraha and Scotland. He believed, with George 

 MacDonald, in the weakness of letting oneself be wounded 

 by the ill-nature of others, and he did not allow some 

 sour faces or stinging words to deter him from carrying 

 into effect the purpose he consequently formed. In 

 New South Wales, which alone of the Australasian 

 colonies (a single province of New Zealand temporarily 

 excepted) rapidly passed through the stage of ecclesias- 

 tical establishment and endowment general in Europe, 

 four religious denominations — Anglicans, Cathohcs, 

 Methodists, and Presbyterians — were recognised and 

 supported by the Colonial Government, which never- 

 theless assumed none of the rights of control usually 

 claimed by the state over established and endowed 

 churches. Such a system was not made to last, though 

 all the subsidised denominations seemed content to 

 accept such " tainted tribute." Yet it needed twenty 

 years of remittent agitation to upset even this unstable 

 equiUbrium. In 1842 he renounced for himself as a 

 minister all aid from the State. Beheving that he had 

 thus fatally weakened his position, or feehng uncom- 



