funds. To him belongs the real honour of introducing the Presbyterian church and school system into Australia. He was instrumental in establishing the Australian College in Sydney in 1832, and to effect this object made considerable personal sacrifices. Shortly after a visit to England in 1841 he joined the Presbyterian Synod of Australia, but in the following year pursued a course adverse to the views or the majority of the Synod, and was censured for disregard of the authority of the Church by refusing to appear when cited to answer charges made against him. He was deposed from his ministerial office, and the deposition was confirmed by the Church courts in Scotland. He applied for relief to the Court of Session, and the Lord Ordinary held that the decision was illegal. The Sydney Presbytery endeavoured to oust him from the possession of Church property, but after a long course of litigation the matter was, in 1862, finally decided in his favour. He held the ministry of the Scots Church, Sydney, from 1823 until his death. On Dec. 17th, 1872, he celebrated the jubilee of his ministry; amidst universal congratulations. The position of Dr. Lang as a politician in a great measure overshadowed his calling as a minister of religion. From the time of his arrival in the colony he took an active interest in social and public questions. In 1835, dissatisfied with the colonial press which then existed, he started the Colonist, a weekly journal, in which he advocated the discontinuance of the system of granting waste lands to settlers, and urged the adoption of the Wakefield principle of selling the lands at an upset price and devoting the proceeds to immigration. He maintained that the waste lands were not the property of the inhabitants, but of the people of the British empire, and ought to be administered in that spirit. His proposal met with some acceptance, was recommended by a select committee of the Legislative Council, and received the approval of Lord Glenelg, the then Secretary of State for the Colonies; but a land system on a different basis was afterwards established by Wentworth. Dr. Lang was an ardent supporter of immigration. In 1830 he addressed a letter to Viscount Goderich, pointing out the means of conveying thousands of the distressed agricultural population of Great Britain to the plenty of New South Wales without expense to the mother country. His idea was to obtain the necessary funds by sales of building allotments in Sydney, and by resuming and selling land granted on conditions unfulfilled to the Church and School Corporation of New South Wales. He published this letter in the colony, and his proposal gave offence to the possessors of the land he proposed to resume. A wordy warfare followed, lasting for years, and the struggle entailed on him much expense and annoyance. He was blamed by Lord Goderich for the indiscreet publication of the letter, and the Legislative Council passed a vote of censure. In 1836 he brought out from England a supply of suitable ministers for the Church, a number of schoolmasters and others, numbering with their families about three hundred persons. He lectured on immigration during his frequent visits to England, and used his influence to promote the settlement of Protestant people in the colony. The bounty system he condemned as calculated to unduly encourage the introduction of Roman Catholics at the expense of the State. In 1843 Dr. Lang was elected a member of the first Legislative Council of New South Wales under the constitution of 1842. He was returned for the district of Port Phillip, now the colony of Victoria. His principal aims in entering political life were to put a stop to the preponderance of Irish Roman Catholic immigrants and to secure for the colony a general system of education adapted to its wants. On the latter question he had been opposed to the Irish national system, but after a visit to Ireland he changed his views and advocated its adoption. A select committee of the Legislative Council, of which Mr. Robert Lowe (now Lord Sherbrooke) was chairman, recommended the system. He was a foremost actor in the movement for the separation of Port Phillip from New South Wales. He broached the idea to the residents of Port Phillip, who were labouring under a feeling of dissatisfaction at the neglect they experienced from the central Government, and he received such encouragement that in 1844 he proposed in the Legislative Council of the mother colony the separation of Port Phillip and its erection into
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