54 A VAIN PETITION. 1787 While Phillip was thus employed in getting his ships ready for sea — ^mnning backwards and forwards between the Navy and the Victualling Boards, the Admiralty and Whitehall — two Roman Catholic priests came forward with a petition ad- dressed to Lord Sydney, praying that they might be allowed to go out with the Fleet as spiritual advisers to their co- jieftfor religionists on board. In a letter addressed, without date, to his lordship, one of them pointed out that there were probably not less than three hundred of the convicts be- longing to their denomination, woefully in need of religious instruction, and earnestly desirous that some minister of their own faith might be suffered to go with them. He also urged that the presence of Catholic priests among them might not only be of great service in cultivating a spirit of obedience to their officers, but might be the means of making them in the end useful members of society in the new world. The appeal was thus adroitly based on political as well as religious grounds ; but unfortunately it made no Not eDter. improssion on the Minister. The prayer was not granted ; and judging from the fact that no reply to the letter can be found among the records, it may be inferred that none was sent.*
- Mr. Justice Barton, in his work on The State of Religion and Edacatioii
in New South Wales, published in 1840, states, on the authority of the Rev. Samuel Marsden, who acted as chaplain in the colony from 1794 to 1838, that **when the First Fleet was on the point of sailing, in the year 1787, no clergyman had been thought of, and that a friend of his own, a pious man of some influence, anxious for the spiritual welfare of the oon* victs, made a strong appeal to those in authority upon the subject, and tabled. Digitized by Google
