The material progress of the Australian colonies, after they assumed the control of their revenues, and of legislation under their various Constitutions, will be best seen by comparing their statistics. The higher conditions on which the true welfare of a community depends will demand first attention. State aid to churches was at an early period withdrawn from all the colonies. Sir Richard Bourke's Church Act, which commanded so much veneration in 1837 in New South Wales, and extorted admiration from Dr. Lang, was doomed to lose not only his allegiance, but that of a majority who had not, like him, become hostile only on ceasing to derive incomes from it. The grant guaranteed in the Constitution Act of New South Wales, for religious purposes, was not abandoned by the Upper House without a struggle, but it was repealed in 1862 with a proviso maintaining existing life-interests. With the exception of such daily diminishing remnants of aid, voluntary support maintains the machinery of the various Churches in Australia, and a sketch of their condition cannot but be interesting to a student.
The Church of England in New South Wales contained five dioceses in 1882—Sydney, Newcastle, Goulburn, Grafton and Armidale, and Bathurst; and steps were being taken to carve another diocese out of the large area of the diocese of Goulburn. Nearly 250 clergymen officiated in the colony. The Church of Rome (next to the Church of England in point of numbers) had several dioceses, and numerous clergy.