Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 2.djvu/148

 AUSTRALIA

118

AUSTRALIA

The religious statistics of South Austraha were in the Commonweahh is surpassed in numerical

not tabulated in 1S46, 1851, and 1861. There was strength only by the adherents of the Church of

no enumeration of religious denominations at the England. The following table, compiled from the

Tasmania census of 1881. The figures given below Australian Handbook for 1905, shows the numerica

for that year are an estimate by T. A. Coghlan, strength of the principal religious groups in the dif

Statistician of New South Wales. The Catholic body ferent States at the census of 1901 : —

Religious Denominations

Commonwealth

Church of England Roman Catholic Presbyterian Methodist Baptist

Congregational Lutheran Salvation Army

Total Population

623,131 347,286 132,617 137,638 16,618 24,834 7.387 9,585

423,914 263,708 191,459 180,263 33,730 17,141

4,078 0,405 7,442 6,574 2,717 S,300 5,170 5,512

106,987 52,193

18,357 90,125 21,764 13,338 26,140 4.030

75,654 41,893 14,707 24,540 3,125 4,404 1,703 1,690

83,815 30,314 11,523 24.999 4,716 5,544 387 1,454

1,497,579 855.799 426,105 504,139 92,670 73,561 74,721 31,100

332,934

167,716

162,752

3,555,674

VI. Education. — For a time all the colonies of the Australasian group followed the example initiated by New South Wales in according State aid to the clergy and the denominational schools of the principal religious bodies, Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians, and Methodists. These grants were withdrawn; at once or by gradually diminishing payments; by South Australia in 1851, after they had been in force only three years; by Queensland in 1860; by New South Wales in 1862; by Tasmania and Victoria, in 1875, and by Western Australia, in 1895. State grants to denominational schools ceased when the various secular systems took effect: in Victoria in 1872; in Queensland, in 1876; in South Australia, in 1878; in New South Wales, in 1879; and in Western Australia in 1896. In all the States of the Commonwealth primary education is com- pulsory. In Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, and Western .\ustralia, it is also free. In New South Wales and Tasmania a small fee is charged, with free education for children whose parents cannot afford to pay for them. In Victoria fees are charged for such extra subjects as book-keeping, shorthand, Euclid, algebra, Latin, French, etc. Throughout the Commonwealth the rate of illiteracy is low. "Out of every 10,000 children between the ages of five and fifteen, there could read and write in 1861, 4,637; in 1871, 5,911; 1881, 7,058; 1891, 7,565" (Coghlan and Ewing, Progress of Australasia in the Nineteenth Century, p. 455). .\t the cen.sus of 1901, according to the "Victorian Year-Book" for 1903 (pp. 70-71), of the children of school age (6 to 13 years) in Victo- ria. 90.12 per cent were able to read and write; in Queensland, 84.42 per cent (Australian bom children only); in Western .\ustralia, 82.05 per cent; in South Australia, 82.00 per cent; in New South Wales, 80.35 per cent, and in Tasmania, 78.77 per cent. Hostility to the Catholic Church gave the chief im- pulse to the secularizing of public instruction in Victoria and New South Wales. In Victoria Mr. Stephen, Attorney-General, declared that the new Act was "to purge the colony of clericalism ", and to lead the rising generation by sure but gradual steps to "worship in common at the shrine of one neutral- tinted deity, sanctioned by the State Department " (Moran, op. cit., 882-883). In New South Wales Henry (after«'ards Sir Henry) Parkes was even more outspoken. Holding aloft his Draft Bill on Public Instruction, at a public meeting, he said: "I hold in my hand what will be death to the calling of the priesthood of the Church of Rome" (Moran, op. cit., 875). One of the first results of the withdrawal of the State grants in the various colonics was the clos- ing of most of the Protestant prini:iry schools. There was, on the other hand, everywhere a steady in- crease in the number of Catholic schools. The fol-

lowing figures, taken from official sources, show the growth of Catholic primary schools in Victoria from the passing of the secular Education Act till 1897:^

Year

Primary Schools

Children Attending

1881 1891 1897

180 208 226

20,337 21,799 24,066

No official returns appear in the Victorian census reports for 1901. The following extract from a table published by T. A. Coghlan (Wealth and Progress of New South Wales, 1897-98, 762) indicates the advance made by Catholic primary schools in the mother-state for twelve years after the date (1882) at which State assistance was withdrawn from de- nominational schools: —

Year

Schools

Teachers

Scholars on Roll

Average Attendance

1888 1891 1897

247 250 296

916 1,242 1,481

27,172 30,691 36,675

21,809 23,788 29,162

According to official returns, there were 41,112 children on the rolls of the Catholic schools in New South Wales in the December quarter, 1904, and 5,413 on the rolls of the Catholic schools of Western Australia on the last school week of 1903 (the latest Government figures available for that State). No official information appears in the census or reports of Tasmania, Queensland, or South Australia. The "Australasian Catholic Directory" for 1906 made what seems to be a somewhat conservative estimate when it set down as 105.835, the number of children attending Catholic schools throughout the Common- wealth.

VII. The .Aborigines. — The origin of the native tribes of Australia is one of tlie unsolved riddles of ethnology, .^n unknown number of these black- skinned people still live in their "wild" state, in small and scattered communities, over vast areas extending from Central Queensland almost to the coast of Western Australia. They have no ac- quaintance with metal, nor with the bow and arrow, and their weapons of war and chase are (with the exception of the boomerang) of a very rude kind, wooden spears and clubs, stone tomahawks, etc. They are extraordinarily keen and skilful hunters. They are polygamous, given at times to cannibalism and infanticide, and have no permanent dwellings, no pottery, and no idea of cultivation of the soil. They die out fast wherever they come in contact