The habit of paying no direct stipend to their clergymen in England has led to a reluctance to contribute good salaries for their support out here, where they must rely solely upon such support; and the lowness of salaries, if not the hardness of the work, has made the Anglican clergy in Australia as a class inferior to their English brethren.  Of course the clergy still contains a large proportion of gentlemen within its ranks, but on the score of ability I fancy the ex-Dissenters have the advantage.  Recognising this, Bishop Moorhouse is endeavouring both to shame Churchmen into raising the stipend of their clergy, and to procure for the congregations not only English gentlemen, but as far as possible hard-working, practical, broad-minded men.  He has a difficult task before him, for already there are plenty of colonial clergymen who are either inferior to nonconformist ministers in cultivation, or stubborn adherents to a regime which is impossible in Australia.  These weeds must be pulled out before you can sow fresh seed; and yet it is hard to call men weeds who are serving the Church according to the best of their lights, faithful, hard-working men, or conservative old gentlemen, who are doing or have done a great deal of good work, and whose failings cannot be attributed to any fault for which you can morally reproach them.

The Church is slow to adapt itself to colonial life.  Amongst a preponderating lower middle-class element Nonconformity, or rather what is better known as Protestantism, is very popular.  Low Churchmen find they can get a better sermon at the chapel, and can be hail-fellow-well-met with their pastor in these extraneous denominations.  Thus the Church loses many of its former adherents, and while Anglicanism still remains the religion of the upper class, it can in no way pretend to be that of even a majority of the community.

The Roman Catholics are on a different footing.  For them no compromise is possible, and they cannot as Roman Catholics but be a state within a state.  From time to time the priesthood incites them to aspire to political power, but hitherto none of these aspirations have borne practical effect, except in strengthening the hands of their adversaries.  At present they are agitating more or less vehemently in each colony for State support to be given to their schools, declaring that it is monstrous that they should be made to pay for a secular education of which their religion prevents them from taking advantage.

At first a section of the Anglican party, comprising nearly all the clergy, joined in this cry, but it became so evident that the bulk of the population was determined not to return to the old system, that they are beginning to desert the Catholics, and are now more wisely and with better chance of success attempting to amalgamate with the other Protestant bodies to obtain the admission into the State schools of religious teaching on a broad Protestant basis;