Page:Handbook of Western Australia.djvu/155

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Disestablishment.
137

let to a gentleman keeping a private school, some years before Bishop Hale's resignation of the See.

The Native Mission, removed from Albany to Perth, was taken up by the Bishop at the request of the leading Church people of the Diocese, and placed under his sole charge. The present Mission House was built, and the boys and girls as they reached adult age sent to the more advanced institution at Poonindie, South Australia.

During Bishop Hale's episcopate, a change, slow in its operation, but most serious in its character, was made in the relation hitherto existing between the Church and the Colonial Government. In passing the Public Estimates through the Legislative Council, for 1872, the Ecclesiastical staff of the Church of England was removed from the Fixed Establishments, and the amount voted for Church purposes placed, with the grants for the Roman Catholic and Nonconformist Communions, under the general heading of "Ecclesiastical." The change seemed one of words, and excited little interest, but it involved the question of "Church and State," and within a day or two the Legislative Council passed a resolution affirming that this change in the Estimates was not to act prejudicially to the interest of existing Chaplains. One effect of this change was to rouse Churchmen to see clearly that when the vested interest of the Chaplains then in office shall have expired, the Church must find internal means of pecuniary support. To this awakening the institution of a Sustentation and Endowment Fund in the latter part of Bishop Hide's episcopate is due. The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and that for the Propagation of the Gospel agreed generously to contribute £200 each, annually, for a fixed period, to meet an annual contribution in the Colony of three times the amount.