Brian Condon: Letters and Documents in 19th Century Australian Catholic History

[Source: Adelaide Archdiocesan Archives copy. Incomplete, undated]

Then, Sir, you will permit me to ask you why Mr Spode [Superintendent of the Convict Department, Hobart.] has not, through you, submitted to His Excellency a copy of that deposition? And I beg also to ask why that gentleman has not submitted a copy of my own deposition, sworn to in the same case in presence of that independent and truly impartial Magistrate J. Price Esq.? Both are intimately connected with the case, and yet neither is amongst the copies of all the papers relative to it which you have done me the honour to transmit to me.

Mr Spode is in my [of?] opinion, which of course may be erroneous, that these depositions alone are sufficient completely to neutralize the intended effect of the prisoner Jackson's information. But were the course pursued by me in this transaction really as bad as Mr Spode has represented it in his elaborate, highly coloured and greatly exaggerated report, it would not justify an illegal proscription of Religious Rights with reference to any portion, however humble and degraded, of her Majesty's subjects.

Although as a Clergyman I cannot become what is termed an informer (an office which would occupy the whole of my time), I say and do as much to prevent the subversion of discipline and the frustration of the ends of Justice as Mr Spode himself. I am not so unjust as to attach blame to that Gentleman for his praiseworthy anxiety to establish strict discipline in every branch of his Department, without which each of whom would soon become an insufferable nuisance instead of a benefit to the Colony, but I do blame him for interfering, in my opinion improperly, with the discipline of [the] Catholic Church in some of these establishments.

In the Factory, Catholic women have been frequently compelled to attend Protestant Service, and only a few days since I learned from Catholic women in the Government Nursery who had just been brought there from the ship by which they had been transported to the Colony, that their grown children had been taken from them by Mr Spode's authority, and having inquired I also learned that by the same authority they had been sent to an exclusively protestant Orphan School where their Holy Religion is not only discountenanced and disallowed but misrepresented and derided. I have seen the women weep for the fate of these children, and heard them declare they would rather see them dead, and I know that the tears of an afflicted widowed mother, however humble and abject, have a voice which will ascend to heaven and be heard with complacency by that Mighty Sovereign who is the Parent and Protector of the fatherless and to whom alone it is possible to pay as much attention to the appeal of the lowliest of His Creatures as to the report of the highest of His Ministers

I have the honour to be, Sir

Your most obedient humble servant

John Joseph Therry