its best efforts towards the good order and amelioration of society, and one destined to wield much of that influence which is most essential towards the reformation of this penal settlement, and the moral well-being of this colony, without means adequate to the fulfilment of his high functions; and your memorialists are not unaware, that a government lives and is efficient but in its officers, that it fails in their deficiencies, and is disregarded in their degradation.

From all which your memorialists conclude, that it was not part of the beneficent plan of religious aid to the Roman Catholic community, which led to the sanction of a Catholic bishop for New South Wales by the Home Government, to leave our right reverend prelate unprovided after his appointment, but rather to refer to the local government as most competent to judge what salary may be requisite and indispensable to his station.

And your memorialists, in the name of their Roman Catholic brethren, respectfully solicit and pray that your Excellency and the honourable the Legislative Council would be pleased to take into your consideration the expediency and justice of providing the Right Reverend Dr. Polding with such a salary as may be deemed adequate to the respectability of his station, and the due fulfilment of its functions.

(Signed)

John H. Plunkett.

R. Therry.

John Ryan Brenan.
Adam Wilson.
J. Blair.

William Davis.
James Dempsey.
William Reynolds.
John O'Sullivan.

(A true copy.)

R. Murphy.

Richd. Sullivan.
John Leary.
Andrew Byrne.
Edward Redmond.

Thomas Higgins.
Andrew Higgins.
Thos. Connelly.

L. DEAS THOMSON,
Clerk of the Council.

COPY OF A DESPATCH FROM LORD GLENELG TO GOVERNOR SIR RICHARD BOURKE, K. C. B.

Sir,

Downing Street, 9 April, 1836.

I have received your despatch of the 4th of October last, enclosing a copy of a memorial addressed to you in council by the lay members of the committee of the Catholic Church at Sydney, praying for an increase to the salary of the Rev. Dr. Polding, together with a copy of a resolution of the Legislative Council, recommending that the salary of Dr. Polding should be increased to 500l. a year.

Under the circumstances which you have stated, I shall not object to sanction the rate of salary proposed to that gentleman, which may be calculated from the 22d of September last, the date of the minute of the council.

Extract from a Return to an Address for a Copy of any Despatch in relation to the first Mission of Dr. John Bede Polding, as Bishop of the Roman Catholic communion in New South Wales. Ordered to be printed 25th March, 1850.

COPY OF A DESPATCH FROM LORD GLENELG TO GOVERNOR SIR RICHARD BOURKE.

Sir,

Downing Street, 21 December, 1835.

In my despatch, No. 81*, of the 30th ultimo, I intimated that His Majesty's Government had acceded to your recommendation of erecting the archdeaconry of New South Wales into a bishopric, and that His Majesty had been graciously pleased to nominate Mr. Broughton to the new see.

I have now the pleasure of acquainting you that Mr.

* House of Commons paper on Religious Instruction, Australia, No. 112, 18 February, 1837. p. 14.

Broughton will shortly be consecrated, and will return to the colony to assume the duties of the episcopal office, with the title of Bishop of Australia, and as a suffragan of the Archbishop of Canterbury.

This arrangement has been carried into effect solely for the purpose of remedying the inconvenience arising from the necessity of an appeal in certain cases to the Bishop of Calcutta, and of enabling the head of the Church of England within the Australian colonies to exercise that immediate and effective control over the clergy of that church which is so essential for the maintenance of discipline and good order. The office of archdeacon is to merge into the higher office of bishop. The bishop is to hold the same rank in the council as he now holds as archdeacon, and is, in other respects, to stand precisely in the same position as the archdeacon has hitherto stood, excepting in regard to those ecclesiastical powers, the extent of which will be defined in his patent.

As Mr. Broughton will derive no additional emolument from this change, I have thought it right to relieve him from those charges which, on a fair calculation, may be considered necessarily connected with the constitution of the bishopric. On this principle he will be exonerated from the payment of the fees chargeable on the letters patent creating the bishopric, and from the further expenses attending his consecration, &c. I have also agreed to allow him the sum of 6007. on account of his expenses in coming to this country and returning to the colony, as, under any circumstances, it would have been necessary for him to have come home for consecration. These charges will, it is calculated, amount to between 13007. and 14007., and will be defrayed by the Colonial Agent out of that moiety of Mr. Broughton's salary, which, although included of course in the full salary voted to him during his absence, he is not, according to the general rule regulating the salaries of absent officers, entitled to receive. During the whole period of his absence he will be entitled to half his salary, whether as archdeacon or as bishop. I have, &c.

(Signed) GLENELG.

APPENDIX C.

Extract from the same Return.

COPY OF A DESPATCH FROM GOVERNOR SIR GEORGE GIPPS TO
LORD STANLEY.

My Lord,

Government House, Sydney, 28 March, 1843.

I have the honour herewith to forward a letter addressed to your lordship by the Bishop of Australia, and to explain that, though the letter is a sealed one, a copy of it has been furnished to me by the Lord Bishop.

It is scarcely necessary for me to observe that the Lord Bishop's letter has been written, and the protest contained in it made, in consequence of the recent assumption by the Rev. Dr. Polding of the style and title of Archbishop of Sydney.

The Rev. Dr. Polding was, by Lord Aberdeen's despatch, No. 26, of the 20th of February, 1835 *, authorised to exercise episcopal functions in New South Wales; and having, before his first arrival in the colony, been consecrated Bishop of Hiero Cæsarea, has generally been called the "Catholic Bishop," though by the local government he was, previously to his going to England in 1841, never addressed in any other form than that of the Right Rev. Dr. Polding.

Since his assumption of the dignity of Archbishop, I find he has (though without any order from me) been on one or two occasions addressed by the Colonial Secretary as the Most Rev. Dr. Polding; and by the visiting-book at Government House, it that he left his name as the Most Rev. Dr. appears Polding on the 25th instant.

In my despatch of the 20th of November, 1840, No. 179, I reported that Dr. Polding had proceeded to Europe on leave of absence, and I have now to add that he reached Sydney on his return only on the 9th instant.

I have, &c.

(Signed)

* Pp. i. ii.

GEO. GIPPS.

APPENDIX D.

Copy of a Circular addressed by Her Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonial Department to the Governors of the British Colonies, dated the 20th day of November, 1847, relating to the Precedence of Roman Catholic Prelates. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, 31 July,

1848.

Sir,

(CIRCULAR.)

Downing Street, 20 November, 1847.

My attention has lately been called by the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to the fact, that the prelates of the Roman Catholic Church in the British Colonies have not hitherto, in their official correspondence with the Governor and authorities, been usually addressed by the title to which their rank, in their own church, would appear to give them a just claim. Formerly there were obvious reasons for this practice; but as Parliament has, by a recent Act (that relating to Charitable Bequests in Ireland), formally recognised the rank of the Irish Roman Catholic prelates, by giving them precedence immediately after the prelates of the Established Church of the same degree -the Roman Catholic archbishops and bishops taking rank immediately after the Protestant archbishops and bishops respectively it has appeared to Her Majesty's Government that it is their duty to conform to the rule thus laid down by the Legislature, and I have accordingly to instruct you hereafter officially to address the prelates of the Roman Catholic Church in your government by the title of "Your Grace," or "Your Lordship," as the case may be.

Parliament not having thought proper to sanction the assumption by the prelates of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland of titles derived from the sees which they hold, a similar rule will be followed in the colonies; thus, for example, the Roman Catholic prelate in New South Wales