In times past the Church of England has struggled to regain the position she formerly held in the older colonies; but now whatever efforts she makes in that direction are confined to the ambition of being prima inter pares—­a position which is vigorously and even bitterly attacked by the other Protestant sects whenever she either tries to assert it or has it thrust upon her.  These ex-Dissenters have a lively remembrance of the yoke they endured in the old country, and even now that the spirit of supremacy has so completely died out, they spring up to do battle against any formality that recalls it to them.  Thus, a few years ago the whole colony of South Australia was convulsed on the question of the Bishop’s right to follow the Governor and precede the Chief Justice at official ceremonies, and peace amongst the devout was only restored by the Bishop’s graceful relinquishment of a position to which his legal right was undeniable.  Even now the title ‘My Lord’ as applied to Bishops acts as a red rag on many ex-Dissenting bulls, and they are as jealous of the slightest official preference of the Church of England as if their dearest religious liberties were therein involved.

Legal and even official equality do not, however, always mean social equality; and the Church still retains a superior social position, a shadow of her departed State authority, which to some of her old competitors—­especially the Congregationalists, Baptists, and Wesleyans—­is the more galling because they are totally destitute of the means of assailing it.  Happily, through the wise conduct of the Bishops of Adelaide and Melbourne in meeting ministers of other denominations on a common platform, whenever the cause of Christianity or of good and right in any way can be served thereby, and in showing sympathy with them in a multitude of ways, this unreasonable jealousy is losing ground and a better feeling springing up; but there are yet too many colonists that have felt the disabilities of Dissent in the old country who are unable to put on the armour of forgiveness, or rather of forgetfulness in the new.  The enemy has lost his sting, but they will not allow him to live on the remembrance of his past greatness without a reminder of his present impotence.

This impotence is in all ways, except socially, a certain reality; for while the ex-Dissenting bodies have thriven and waxed numerous and powerful upon the bread of independence, the Church has languished for want of her accustomed prop.  Accustomed, not only to support their own ministers, but also to pay tithes and Church-rates for the benefit of their rival, the ex-Dissenters have simultaneously had their burden lightened and, for the most part, their incomes increased by the change of country.  Besides this, they have to a certain extent felt themselves put upon their mettle to show their superiority to their old master, and thus they have put their best foot foremost, with the good result which always attends