Amid the mass of moral corruption, which the British ships had thus imported into the coasts of New Holland, the only hope of infusing health and purity was from religion. But, unhappily, the age in which that expedition left the English shores, was certainly not a religious age; if there was less _hypocrisy_ then than there now is, certainly there was less _real piety_. In the great towns of the mother country, population and wealth were allowed to make rapid strides, without a single thought being entertained of applying a portion of the increasing wealth of the nation to the spiritual instruction of its increasing population. If there was no room for the poorer classes of society at the parish church, it was thought they might go to the meeting-house; and if there was no room for them there, they might stay at home on the Lord's day and be idle; it was doing no worse than many of their betters, in a worldly sense, were constantly in the habit of doing.[86] While notions and practices of this nature prevailed at home, it was not to be expected that any very extraordinary attention would be paid to the religious instruction of the convicts and other settlers in New South Wales. Yet since, even then, it would have been thought shocking to have left a large gaol, with 757 prisoners in it, altogether destitute of the offices of religion, so it could not have been expected that the same number of convicts would ever have been cast forth as evil from their native land, and their souls left to perish on the other side of the globe, without a single chance, humanly speaking, of receiving those blessings of forgiveness and grace, which Christ died to procure for all men. But, whatever might have been thought before hand, or whatever may have been the immediate cause of such neglect, it positively appears, that, "when the fleet was on the point of sailing, in the year 1787, no clergyman had been thought of," nor was it without a strong appeal to those in authority from one whose conduct in this instance is worthy of all praise, WILBERFORCE, aided by the interest of Bishop Porteus with Sir Joseph Banks, that the Rev. William Johnson was appointed chaplain.[87] From whatever cause this oversight may have arisen, whether it was intentional, or (what is more likely) merely the consequence of forgetfulness and carelessness, it speaks pretty plainly for the religious indifference of the government. However, the colony was, happily, not permitted to be founded without any one present to administer the sacraments and ordinances, and enforce the duties of our holy religion among the first settlers and convicts.[88] By Divine Providence, acting through the instrumentality of man, the British nation was spared the sin and shame, which it had well nigh incurred, of casting forth from its own shores a vile mass of uncleanness and corruption, and forgetting at the same time to place amongst it the