a seventh of the whole territory, for that purpose, to the Episcopalian clergy, with free access, in the meantime, to the colonial treasury-chest. It will scarcely be believed that so wanton an insult as this precious document implied, could have been offered to the common sense of a whole community, even by the late tory administration; or that men could have been found in the nineteenth century to perpetrate so gross an outrage on the best feelings of a numerous body of reputable men." During the ensuing four or five years, we are told by the same authority that it was completely in the power of the archdeacon and clergy "to have formed a noble institution for the general education of the youth of Australia with the very crumbs that fell from their corporation-table."[182] They might, "if they had only been possessed of the smallest modicum of common sense, have secured the exclusive predominance of episcopacy in the management of the education of the whole colony, _for all time coming_." And yet, adds the sagacious Scotchman, in the very next paragraph, "the yoke must have proved intolerable in the end, and would sooner or later have been violently broken asunder during some general burst of public indignation." After a grievous misrepresentation of the expenses incurred by the Church and School Corporation,[183] and a sneer at the want of education which is said to prevail among its members,[184] Dr. Lang contrives at last to land himself, if not his readers, at the desired conclusion, namely, that "ignorance is the mother of devotion" to colonial episcopacy! [181] Gladstone's "The State in its Relations with the Church," chap. viii. p. 315. [182] Lang's New South Wales, vol. ii. p. 317, &c. See also, at 265-6, a series of similar statements. A good specimen of Dr. Lang's veracity occurs at p. 267, where the Church and School Corporation is said to have consisted chiefly of _clergymen_, whereas the majority were _laymen_. See Burton on Religion and Education in New South Wales, p. 21, and Appendix, No. 1. [183] They are accused of spending 20,000_l._ a-year of public money, under pretence of providing for religious instruction and education, while nothing was really done; whereas, out of this sum, nearly 17,000_l._ were already appropriated for the existing ecclesiastical establishment; and, during the continuance of the Corporation, the schools increased from 16 to 40, and the number of children educated in them from 1,037 to 2,426. See Burton on Religion and Education in New South Wales, pp. 24 and 32. [184] See the book just quoted for a list of the members of the Church and School Corporation, p. 21. Whatever might be the education of these gentlemen, it is evident that better educated men were not very likely to be found in the colony than the great law officers of the crown, the members of the legislative council, and the nine senior chaplains.