ie, were traced westward of the Blue Mountains, until
they were supposed to lose themselves in endless and impassable swamps.
Northwards, the River Hastings, and a large extent of country suitable
for flocks and herds, called Liverpool Plains, were discovered. Besides
which, three penal settlements for the punishment of unruly convicts
were formed, one at Emu Plains, another at Newcastle, near the mouth of
the River Hunter, and a third at Port Macquarie, at the mouth of the
Hastings.

But the mention of new penal settlements, in which the punishment and
removal of gross offenders were the only objects, while the reformation
and salvation of those poor men were never thought of, forcibly recalls
us to a subject of which we have for some time lost sight, and which
must be once more noticed before the history of the rise and early
progress of the colony of New South Wales is completed. Where was the
Church all this time? What was the Church of England doing in the now
flourishing settlement of Australia? How far did the state follow at
once both its duty and its interest, and employ in the work of
reformation in this land of criminals those heavenly instruments, the
Bible and the Church? The reply to all these inquiries is briefly made,
but the national sin and shame involved in that short reply it might
need volumes to unfold.

In 1821, at the end of Macquarie's government, there was scattered about
in the colony a population of 29,783, of whom 13,814 were convicts, and
among these were found ministering _seven_ clergymen of the Church of
England, with no bishop of that Church to "set things in order"[126]
nearer than the Antipodes,--the very opposite side of the habitable
globe! Nor, if we look (as unhappily now in every English colony we must
look,) beyond the pale of the English Church, shall we find either
Romish superstition or Dissenting zeal working any of their usual
wonders. Though the number of Romanists from Ireland was very great in
the colony, yet they had, in 1821, only _one_ priest residing among
them; the Presbyterians at Portland Head had a catechist only, and with
respect to the other "denominations" little or nothing is recorded:--the
_establishment_ had taken as yet so poor a hold of the soil of New
South Wales, that the _voluntary system_, which seems often to need
its support, as ivy needs the support of a tree, had scarcely been
transplanted thither. One observation, before we quit for the present