such efforts.  Their ministers, better paid, and holding a higher social position than in England, have naturally become a superior class of men as a whole to those in the old country.  Every day they are advancing, towards a higher standard of education and manners.  Nor has the gain in education and position been accompanied by, as far as I can see, any loss in earnestness or deterioration in work.  No one sect is sufficiently preponderant to admit of that.

The friendly competition between them has been beneficial to them all; and, in spite of rivalry, the spirit of toleration between Protestant sects is thoroughly observed.  Unfortunately, this toleration is not extended to the Roman Catholics.  Their doctrines are so directly in opposition to the prevailing democratic and Protestant spirit of the community, that they have come to be regarded as Ishmaelites, if not as Amalekites, occupying ground which ought to belong to the faithful.  An Anti-Popery cry would at any time command success; and numerous and influential as the Catholics are, directly they begin to assert their influence all the other religious bodies unite to counteract, and end by suppressing it.  For a spice of intolerance in this respect, and for a general Philistinism in its views on all subjects, Australia is indebted to the middle-class Protestant sects, who form the most important element in the community; but to them also, in a large measure, it owes its political and social stability, and all those standard moral qualities which are the only safe foundation for a superstructure of intellect.

Because I have spoken so warmly of the good influence which the ex-Dissenting or Protestant sects have exercised in Australia, it must not be supposed that the Church has been altogether a laggard.  Probably no section of the English clergy has worked harder and more manfully than that which has been stationed in Australia.  It is no fault of theirs if their sphere has been limited and their good influence less effective than that of their rivals.  But they have been labouring under the misfortune of being unsuited to the people and circumstances amongst whom and which they live and work.  Their sphere has lain almost entirely amongst the upper and lower classes, and it is neither of these that governs Australia.  Where they came into contact with the middle class, the power in the land, they have been placed in the position of the round man in the square hole.  The men of the middle class have asserted their social equality to, if not their superiority over, their clergy; and this an English gentleman finds difficulty in admitting, still more one who considers himself the minister of God to the people, rather than of the people to God.  The Thirty-nine Articles do not admit of his recognising the orders of his nonconformist brethren as equal to his own, and this has been set down to pride.  Altogether, the Anglican clergyman has been put in a false position, to extricate him from which is taxing all the tact of so politic a prelate as Bishop Moorhouse.