Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/199

 were forty-one criminals executed, of whom not one was born in Victoria;—so it is clear that the State schools cannot be held responsible in any of these cases. Of this number, two only were natives of other Australian colonies; there were nine Englishmen, one Welshman, seventeen Irishmen, two Scotchmen; and for Belgium, France, Switzerland, United States, and West Indies, one each; China, four; at sea, one. Twelve of these forty-one claimed to be of the Church of England, twenty-one were Roman Catholics, two Presbyterians, three Wesleyans, and three Pagans. Thirty-six were cases of murder, and the residue capital cases of other kinds. As I have elsewhere pointed out, these figures are the more startling, when it is borne in mind that the Roman Catholics only number a fourth of the population.

These statistics, published from year to year, by Mr. Hayter, have really furnished the most powerful argument in favour of the State schools, and against the old system of giving large grants to the various religious denominations for educational purposes. But, as I have said, while bound to accept such statistics, I by no means draw the anti-religious deductions from them so trenchantly set forth