_l._ must be promised also from private sources. A certain
proportion of free sittings, (one-fourth, according to Lang, at least
one-sixth part, according to Burton,) is to be reserved in each
building. Such are the principal points of the system, and, according
to the governor's regulations, the assistance thus offered is limited
chiefly to the Church of England, the Church of Rome, and the Scottish
Kirk, which "three grand divisions of Christians"[213] are thus made, in
fact, the three established communions of New South Wales.

[210] Letter of Rev. W. H. Walsh to S. P. G., dated October 6th, 1840.

[211] In Van Diemen's Land, in 1838, it was stated that sixteen out of
every twenty-three persons, nearly two-thirds, belonged to the Church
of England. Bishop of Australia's Letter to S. P. G., dated August 18,
1838.

[212] See the Memorial of the (Roman) Catholic Inhabitants of New
South Wales to Lord Normanby. Burton on Education and Religion.
Appendix, p. 117.

[213] Sir Richard Bourke's Letter to the Right Hon. E. G. Stanley,
September 30th, 1833. Sir Richard, in his haste or his ignorance, has
overlooked the Greek Church.

Undoubtedly good has resulted from the enactment of this law in 1836,
for before that there were scarcely any means open of obtaining help
towards religious instruction, whereas certain means are open now, and
have been very much used. Yet because some good has resulted in this
way, the evil spirit and wretched tendency of the measure must not be
overlooked. All the good that has resulted might have been obtained
without any of its accompanying evil, if a perfect toleration had been
established, the National Church properly endowed, and a sufficient
supply of Roman Catholic priests or Presbyterian teachers for the
convict population of those persuasions liberally supported by
government, as in the gaols in Ireland. In this case, the poor convict,
who is not permitted to possess money, would have had the consolations
of religion, however imperfect, offered to him in his own way, while the
free settler would have had the doors of the national Church opened to
him, or the liberty, in case of his dissenting from that, of providing
for himself a separate conventicle. Where would have been the hardship
of this arrangement? Or why should the _voluntary system_, which is, in
the northern hemisphere, so highly extolled by many Irish Romanists and
not a few Presbyterians, in the so