s
distressing trial is frequently occurring; when illness, or death, or
removal, deprives a parish of its spiritual shepherd, for a time at
least his place is liable to be left vacant, and his people likely
to become as sheep going astray. It appears likewise, from the Report
of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, that an
assistant-chaplain for Norfolk Island was appointed in 1841. There have
been two clergymen of the Church of Rome in the island ever since 1838,
an arrangement which was alleged to be necessary, in order that the
chaplain himself might not be deprived of private confession and
absolution.[195] There was no church in the island a few years ago, but
a room in one settlement and a barn in the other were the places where
divine service was regularly attended. Besides the Morning and Evening
Prayers on Sunday, divine service takes place five times during the
week, twice in the gaol, twice in the hospital, and once a week for
those men who are exempt from work, their sentences having expired.
There may, as has been stated, be much hypocrisy in Norfolk
Island,[196] but surely the spirit which was offended at efforts that
have wrought even these changes in a spot of extreme moral and religious
desolation, may, without breach of charity, be pronounced to have been
an unclean and evil spirit. Can this language be justly deemed too
strong, when the facts already stated are borne in mind; when, (to sum
up the whole case in a single example,) it is remembered that in one
year, 1838, the colonial government of New South Wales paid 57,740_l._
11_s._ 3_d._ for its police establishment and gaols, while the very
utmost that was spent in providing religious instruction for _all the
prisoners_ within the limits of the colony amounted, during the same
period, to less than 1000_l._?[197]

[195] The reason given by the Roman Catholic, Dr. Ullathorne, is that
the two priests divide the salary, and receive together no more than the
one chaplain.--ULLATHORNE'S _Reply to Burton_, p. 76. The reader must
bear in mind the different scale of expenses required by a person who
_must_ be single, and that of a person who may be, and generally is,
a married man.

[196] See Committee on Transportation, 1838, pp. 137, 138.

[197] See Burton on Education and Religion in New South Wales,
pp. 287-289. The actual sum there stated is either 725_l._ or 855_l._,
according as certain expenses connected with the est