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23 CHAPTER I.

The early struggles of the Church In Australia.

IN order that a comprehensive understanding may be had of the many vicissitudes through which the Church in Australia has passed, it is imperatively necessary to take a rapid retrospective glance over the whole field of its effort, since the days, long gone, when drastically oppressive measures, put into force against the Church, stained the childhood of a nation.

Tho year 1788 was a memorable one for this far Southern Land, for then it was that Captain—afterwards Governor—Phillip raised the English flag, and proclaimed Australia a British possession. Prom 1788 to 1799 there was no Catholic priest in Australia, a strange circumstance to contemplate in view of the fact that during these eleven intervening years one-third of the whole population of the Colony were Catholics.

One does not have to look far for an explanation of this incongruous condition of affairs. It is impossible to doubt that it was the fixed intention of the Home Government to establish the Church of England as the dominant Church, to the exclusion of all others. This assertion is evidenced by the action of the Home Government in the second year of the Colony's existence, when instructions were sent out to set apart in each township, in the name of His Majesty George in., four hundred acres for the Church of England minister, and 200 acres for the maintenance of a Church of England schoolmaster. The same instructions were afterwards repeated to Governor Macquarie. Further, in 1793—on the 25th of August an English Church which had been erected