SURVEY OF THE EARLY SEVENTIES 167 



educate all our people, build our own schools, and show you in fair 

 competition a better result. It was impossible to admit such a claim 

 and to refuse the demands which would have arisen from other 

 discontented Churches. The end would have been a return to an 

 acute form of denominationalism, with the Minister of Education 

 and all his elaborate machinery presiding over a handful of budding 

 rationalists and nothingarians. 



The Eoman Catholics would, perhaps, have had a more patient 

 consideration of their claims if they had restricted them to equity. 

 Unfortunately, as the contest proceeded, and they despaired of ob- 

 taining what they deemed justice, their utterances grew more angry, 

 and from pulpit and press they assailed the supporters of the Act 

 with indiscriminate abuse. One of their champions, who officially 

 stated the case for his co-religionists, printed their opinion of Mr. 

 Stephen as " A narrow-minded bigot, an unscrupulous politician, 

 an intense hater of Catholicity and of its progress in this colony. . . . 

 A man who did not scruple to act in direct opposition to the policy 

 of his Church in order to be revenged on the Catholics, to whom he 

 attributed his numerous defeats at the polling booth." With pen 

 and tongue the Act was assailed as deliberately conceived in an open 

 spirit of hostility to the Catholics. One very eminent preacher of 

 the day, Father O'Malley, S.J., said that the burning sense of the 

 wrong and persecution which his people felt was due to the know- 

 ledge that the real underlying object of the Act was to destroy the 

 faith of Catholic children practically to proselytise on a large scale 

 under Government compulsion. Such extreme statements naturally 

 aroused an irritated antagonism ; bigotry was met by intolerance, 

 and there was loud demand for no compromise. So the Bill went 

 through with a substantial majority in both Houses, and its author, 

 Mr. J. Wilberforce Stephen, became the first Minister of Education, 

 which office he held in addition to that of Attorney-General until 

 May, 1874, when he was transferred to the Bench of the Supreme 

 Court. 



Whatever may be the opinion of the Churches, the community 

 as a whole are satisfied with, and indeed rather proud of the position 

 which Victoria holds in educational matters as compared with other 

 British Colonies. That there are some defects in the system, and 



