Brian Condon: Letters and Documents in 19th Century Australian Catholic History
[Source: Adelaide Archdiocesan Archives copy. Marked 'No. 29']
Sydney
29th. October 1821
Reverend Sir,
I receive from your hands with much pleasure, in your own name and that of your Roman Catholic Brethren of New South Wales, the very handsome silver trowel now presented to me, and I feel myself much honored in having been thus selected to make use of this Instrument in laying the first stone of the first Roman Catholic Chapel attempted to be erected in Australia.
The sentiments you have addressed to me are congenial with my own, in the beneficial result to be derived from the erection of the proposed Edifice.
It has been a great gratification to witness and assist at the ceremony now performed, and I have every hope that the consideration of the British Government in supplying the Roman Catholics of the Colony with established clergymen, will be the means of strengthening and augmenting (if that is possible) the attachment of the Catholics of New South Wales to the British Government, and will prove an inducement to them to continue as I have ever found them to be, loyal and faithful subjects to the Crown.
I beg you will accept of my best acknowledgements for the sentiments of friendship, regard and kind good wishes you have been pleased to express for myself and my family.
L. Macquarie
Governor in chief of N.S. Wales
[Note: The most extensive collection of transcriptions of Fr Therry's correspondence remains Eris O'Brien's The Foundation of Catholicism in Australia; life and letters of Archpriest John Joseph Therry, Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1922]