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 HODGSON

381

HOFER

pronnce of Melbourne, Hobart was named one of its suffragan sees. It remained part of the pro\"ince of Melbourne until 1888, when Hobart was made an archdiocese and Tasmania became an independent ecclesiastical province. Though Tasmania was dis- covered in 1642 by the Dutch, no attempt at settle- ment seems to have been made b}' them. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the presence of French exploring expeditions aroused the suspicions of the British, who had already estabUshed a colony in New South Wales, and led to the permanent occupa- tion of Tasmania by Britain. The first settlement was made in 1803 at Risdon, but in 1804 it was re- moved to Sullivan's Cove, the site of the present city of Hobart. The population of Tasmania was about 183,000 on 31 December, 1908 (CathoUcs, 32,000). The circumstances of the early settlement of the island did not tend to religious progress. It was made the dumping-ground for the refractor}' prisoners of Bot- any 13ay.

There was no Catholic chaplain to administer to the prison population and the first few free settlers imtil 1821, when Rev. Philip Connolly was appointed; he was vicar-general to the Vicar Apostolic of Mauritius for Van Diemen's Land and New Holland. His first church, a small wooden structure, was named after St. Virgilius;in 1 835 Fat her Cot ham, O.S.B., was appointed to help him. Connolly died in 1839, and Bishop Folding appointed Father Therry as his vicar-general in Tasmania. The account of his struggles in those early days, when as in other British colonies an at- tempt was made to make the settlement as Protestant as possible, is very interesting. Therrj' and his col- leagues did wonders among their flock. They had a parish of 26.215 square miles, with a number of scat- tered settlements, without roads to make passage easy, and with hostile blacks to endanger their lives. When in 1842 Bishop Willson took possession of the See of Hobart, he found a land well prepared for his labours.

It was mainly through his efforts in directing atten- tion to the inhumanity of the prison system that the penal settlement at Norfolk Island, then imder his jurisdiction, was broken up, the lot of the prisoners in Tasmania made much more tolerable, and the sj'stem itself finally abandoned. His successor. Most Rev. Daniel Murphy, who arrived in 1866, had laboured in India previously. He died on 27 Dec, 1907. While Dr. WilLson's episcopate was chiefly noted for his labours in the cause of humanity. Dr. >Iurphy laboured for the training of the young. The Sisters of Charity had long worked in Hobart under Bishop Willson. Under Bishop Murphy their work was extended, and the Presentation Sisters, the Sisters of St. Joseph, the Sis- ters of Mercy, and the Sisters of the Sacred Heart all opened schools. Dr. Murphy's last work was the erection of the College of St. Virgilius for the young boys of his flock. The present archbishop, Most Rev. Patrick Delany, has arranged with the Irish Chris- tian Brothers to take charge of St. Virgilius's College. At the request of the archbishop, the Catho- lic schools of the island are subject to inspection and examination by the State School in.?pectors, but they receive nothing from the public funds. The State schools have Scripture lessons in their curriculum. The teacher, whether a believer or an unbeliever, is bound to give them. If Catholic parents object, their children are exempt from attendance at these lessons. The CathoUcs strongly protest against the injustice of being forced to contribute to a system which teaches a kind of mild Protestantism to the children.

The State offers a number of scholarsliips to be com- peted for by the pupils of all schools, whether public or "private ". But as both schools and teachers have now by law to be registered and Ucensed by the School Registration Board, there is, strictly speaking, no longer any "private " school in the State. Education

is now free in the public primary schools. There is a Tasmanian university, on the board of which a Catho- hc priest has a place, just as a priest holds a seat on the school registration board. The personal influence and example of the Bishops and Archbishops of Hobart and of the pioneer priests succeeded in removing almost altogether the religious acerbities b\' which other British dependencies are often troubled. There are at present in the archdiocese, the archbishop, 26 priests, 135 nims. 4 superior day schools, 25 priman,' schools, 1 orphanage, 1 Magdalen home (under the Good Shepherd nuns), and 3280 children in CathoUc schools. Like every Australian pro%-ince, Tasmania has its Catholic paper, the "Monitor". During the early days the clergy were paid by the State as chap- lains to the prison population. The endowment con- tinued after the State had received the right of representative government. In 1869 State endow- ments to religion were withdrawn, but certain sums of money were voted, according to the number of their adherents, to the hitherto endowed churches. The Sinn granted to the CathoUcs is held in State bonds and returns to the archdiocese about £700 a year. The aborigines are extinct, having been "civiUzed" out of existence. The last sur^nvor died in 1876. There are some half-castes who are forced by the Government to reside on the islands in Bass Straits. They, too, are dj'ing out.

Knibbs. Commonwealth Slalistics; Moran, History of the Catholic Church in Australasia (Sydney, s. d.); Government Handbook of Tasmania; Australian Catholic Directory, 1909.

John O'Mahoney.

Hodgson, Si-DNEY, laj-man and martjT; date and place of birth unknown; d. at Tyburn, 10 Dec, 1591. He was a convert to the Church. In 1591, while Father Edmund Jennings was sajdng Mass at the house of Mr. Swithin Wells in London, the pursuivant Topcliffe and his assistants broke into the house just at the moment of consecration. On this account alone, their entrance into the room was obstructed by some of the male members of the congregation, includ- ing Sydney Hodgson, until the conclusion of the Mass; these gentlemen then surrendered themselves. Hodg- son and the others were brought to trial on 4 Dec, the charge against him being merely that of recei\ang and relieving priests, and of being reconciled to the Church of Rome, he was offered his life if he would give some sort of a promise of occasional conformity to the Established Church, but as he preferred to die for his religion, he was condemned and executed.

GiLLOw, BibL Diet. Eng. Cath., s. v.; Challoner. Memoirs (Edinburgh, 1S~S), I, 180. 190; Dodd-Tiernet, Church History, II. 260: Morris, Troubles, 3rd series.

C. F. Wemtss Bhown.

Hofbauer, Clement. See Clement Mart Hof- BAUER, Saint.

Hofer, Andreas, patriot and soldier, b. at St. Leonhard in PassejTthale, Tyrol, 22 Nov., 1767; executed at Mantua, 20 Feb., 1810. His father was known as the "Sandwirth" (i. e., landlord of the inn on the sandy spit of land formed by the Passeyr. The inn had been in the family for over one himdred years). Hofer's education was very limited. As a youth, he was engaged in the wine and horse trade, but he went farther afield, learned to know men of every class, and even acquired a knowledge of Italian that stood him in good stead later. After his mar- riage with Anna Ladurner, he took over his father's business, which, however, did not flourish in his hands. Gifted, though not a genius, a dashing but upright young man, loyal to his God and his sovereign, he made many friends by his straightforward character; his stately figure and flowing beard conti-ibuting in no small degree to his attractiveness. When the TjtoI was handed over to Bavaria at the Peace of Presburg, the "Sandwirth" was among the delegates who