APPENDIX E.
EDUCATION IN AUSTRALIA.
The New South Wales Public Instruction Act of Sir Henry Parkes, which came into operation on May 1, 1880, attempted a compromise of the religious difficulty, by permitting the teachers to impart religious instruction, and by giving one hour of each school day to the clergymen of the various denominations. In one of his admirable, but perhaps too frequent, addenda to the Cruise of the Bacchante, the Rev. J. N. Dalton, who, as an English clergyman, may be surely taken as an impartial critic, remarks: "The Act was passed almost unanimously, both by the Upper and Lower Houses, and the feeling in the colony is intensely strong in favour of a religious instruction. It is provided that the minimum four hours a day of secular instruction to be given by the schoolmaster shall include general religious instruction free from special dogma. But to meet the views of denominationalists, for whom this general religious instruction is not enough, it is further provided that certified religious teachers shall have access to the
