166 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



Parliament, was to ensure that every child between the ages of 

 six and thirteen, not otherwise instructed or specially exempted, 

 should have at least four hours' teaching on five days of the week. 

 No Scripture reading or religious exercises of any kind were to 

 be allowed during school hours, but under somewhat arbitrary 

 conditions permission might be obtained, if recommended by the 

 Local Boards of Advice, for holding religious instruction classes 

 at other times. The clergy were of opinion that making reading, 

 writing and arithmetic compulsory, and religious instruction op- 

 tional and voluntary, was reversing the proper order of things. A 

 large majority, however, both in Parliament and outside, derided 

 that opinion, and contemptuously rejoined that if the clerical 

 teaching was of any value, it would soon be in demand without 

 compulsion by the law. And many thoughtful people honestly 

 believed that the necessity of domestic training in these matters 

 would awaken in parents a supervision over the morals of their 

 children which they had been too ready to leave to the parson 

 and the schoolmaster. 



The Eoman Catholics had, no doubt, stronger grounds for their 

 dissent than any of the other Churches. They could not, in accord- 

 ance with their traditions, accept any form of schooling for their 

 young which was entirely divorced from the teaching of religion, 

 because secular education had been emphatically condemned by 

 a papal encyclical. But, even apart from the prohibition, the Church 

 had always maintained the paramount necessity of making religious 

 or more correctly speaking doctrinal principles the basis of edu- 

 cation whereon to graft the learning of this world. Imbued with 

 these views the Eoman Catholics, who formed approximately one- 

 fourth of the population, naturally protested against paying one- 

 fourth of the annual cost of a system which they could not share 

 in without disobeying the teachings of their Church, incurring the 

 displeasure of their priests, and even risking the refusal of the 

 Sacraments, if they persisted in sending their children to such 

 schools after due warning. The cost of providing all this free 

 instruction, and erecting suitable buildings for the purpose, soon 

 exceeded 600,000 a year. The leaders of this party said, give us 

 one-fourth of the expenditure, and for this 150,000 a year we will 



