SIR, - It is a saying of that great poet and statesman, M. Lamartine, that "Every truth must have its Calvary;" that is, that in the process of establishing any great principle of paramount importance for the welfare and advancement of society, some person or other must be victimised. Allow me to point out to your readers how this saying has been realised in my own experience in establishing this important truth, that a great effort is indispensably necessary on the part of the colonists of this country to ensure an efficient Evangelical ministry for Australia.

On my return to England for the sixth time, in the year 1846, one of the principal objects of my voyage home was to procure a considerable number of Evangelical ministers for these colonies, and to make such arrangements as would ensure a future and regular supply. I had previously sent home, at my own charges exclusively, one of my elders, Mr. James S. Smith, at whose instance the Rev. Andrew Mitchell Ramsay of Melbourne, and the Rev. William Ritchie, recently of Sydney, were induced to come out to Australia.

It was only, however, with extreme difficulty, and after the most vexatious disappointments and delays, that the requisite arrangements could be made for sending a third minister, the Rev. Thomas Elliot Richardson of Portland, to follow these two. The Board, whose sanction it was necessary to procure, were prepossessed in favour of Canada, as being, in their opinion, a more eligible field for ministerial labour; and every inducement was accordingly held out to Mr. Richardson to detach him from the Australian, and to fix him down for the Canadian field.

In the year 1848, when it was determined to send out a vessel with emigrants to Moreton Bay, with a view to the introduction of cotton cultivation by European labour in that district, I endeavoured to procure an Evangelical Minister from Scotland, to accompany the emigrants, and to be settled at Brisbane, where a Presbyterian Minister was much required, and earnestly desired at that time. But I was unsuccessful.

At length, however, a suitable minister presented himself just in time, viz. the Rev. Charles Stewart, who, although a native of Scotland, had been dispensing the ordinances of religion to a Non-conformist Congregation in Staffordshire in England. As I had no funds, however, to draw upon for such a purpose, I appealed to the religious public through the press, recommending that a certain amount should be raised to provide a passage out for the Reverend Mr. Stewart and his sister, who had been keeping his house: but as the only response that was made to this appeal was a few pounds, I handed the amount to Mr. Stewart to assist in buying books, and charged myself with the cost of his own and his sister's passage.

I had virtually engaged a minister from the North of Ireland, whom I had gone a considerable way to visit when in that country, to accompany the emigrants per the ship "Chaseley," which was also destined for Moreton Bay; but the question of funds not being settled satisfactorily, the arrangement was broken off.

I was sorry indeed, to find occasionally that Ministers contemplating emigration to Australia, and knowing perfectly well that I had no personal interest in the matter whatever, were nevertheless inclined to drive as hard a bargain with me about their future support as if I had been a West Indian plantee, engaging Negro-drivers for his estates in Jamaica or Demerara. Only think of Paul the Apostle, or his companion Barnabas, higgling about what they were to have per annum at Antioch or Damascus, and all respect and reverence for these truly heroic men would be gone immediately. The Minister I did engage for the "Chaseley" was the Rev. Thomas Kingsford, the passage out of whose large family cost me (for it all devolved upon myself) £100; and I had to give Mr. Kingsford £10 besides, to enable him to get comfortably off.

When the "Larpent" - the first of the vessels I despatched for Geelong - was getting ready for sea an English Dissenting Minister, possessed of some property of his own, engaged a cabin for his family, and agreed to act as Chaplain during the voyage. But, three or four days before the sailing of the ship, he changed his mind, and resolved to remain at home, and I was left to procure a substitute immediately, or to allow the vessel to proceed to sea without a Chaplain. In these circumstances, I was induced to offer the vacant cabin to the Reverend William Higgins, of London, who had been soliciting such a boon some time before, provided he could get ready in time. He did get ready accordingly; but the whole cost of his large family's passage, (the whole of which devolved upon myself) amounted to £130, altogether.

Even in cases in which ministers paid their own passage either in whole or in part, or had it paid for them, I was subjected to a considerable additional expenditure beyond the rate nominally fixed, in securing for them better accommodations than they would otherwise have had. This was the case in the "Travancore," by which three ministers and one licentiate came out to the colony. There was a considerable deficit besides, in the case of one of the ministers by that vessel who had a large family, and whose passage ought to have been wholly paid for by the community from which he came. But as he is now doing good service to his adopted country and struggling successfully with very serious difficulties, I should be sorry ever to prefer any claim for the amount still due.

Indeed I am strongly of opinion that the Churches at home ought to bear the whole expense of the passage out of eligible ministers to the colonies, and if this had been done systematically, as it might have been in times past, the result would have been extremely gratifying, and many a moral wilderness in the colonies would long since have been converted into a fruitful field.

The last case I shall mention, is that of the only minister of the four who arrived by the "Clifton," whose passage had to be paid by myself. During my occasional visits to the City of Glasgow, I became acquainted with the Rev. Alexander McNicol, now of Mount Macedon and Bacchus Marsh. He had then been labouring with much acceptance as a city missionary there for five years; and from his services in that capacity, he appeared to me peculiarly fitted for the colonial field, for which indeed he was himself inclined, as he required a milder climate.

But Mr. McNicol being married, and having a large family and but a small income, told me frankly that he could not meet the expense of his passage out. I immediately relieved him, however, of all anxiety on that hand, by guaranteeing him a free passage out for himself and family; in the expectation, however, that the amount would be paid by the Church to which he belonged. I accordingly wrote to the Mission Board of the United Presbyterian Church, requesting their aid on the occasion, and stating that as a passage could be got for Mr. McNicol and his family for £90 or £100, I thought £150 would be a proper amount to advance on his account, as that sum would leave £50 of £60 for his outfit. But the Board refused to advance a single farthing for the purpose.

I then applied to the minister of the particular church with which Mr. McNicol had been connected as a city missionary, and the minister, who had been a fellow-student of my own, recommended that I should preach a sermon for a collection for this particular object in the church, to originate a fund for Mr. McNicol's passage and outfit. I accordingly paid my own passage from London, where I was then residing, by the railway to Glasgow and back, and preached a sermon, with a view to a collection, to a large congregation. What the amount of the collection was I did not exactly ascertain, but I understood it was to be followed up by a private subscription among the friends of the cause. At all events, Mr. McNicol preached himself in the same church on the Sabbath following, after I had returned to London; and at the close of the sermon, the minister of the church, as I was told by my two sons who were present, addressed his people in terms of the highest commendation in regard to Mr. McNicol, congratulating them on the effort they were making on his behalf, and informing them that they were sending him out themselves, without assistance from any other congregation.

I thought indeed, when the circumstance was reported to me by my sons, that it was no great affair after all to raise £150 (as I supposed they had done) for such an object; for the congregation was both large and wealthy, and the minister, in particular, had a private fortune of his own, and was one of the wealthiest ministers of religion in Scotland. But what was the real fact, and disgraceful fact - which I learned only at the eleventh hour? Why, all they had raised was barely sufficient to pay for Mr. McNicol's outfit and passage - to London! - his passage out to Australia being kindly left to be arranged for by me!

It was this extreme difficulty of obtaining suitable ministers from home for these colonies, with the chance of only getting, with a few honorable exceptions, but fourth or fifth-rate men after all, that induced me to make a great effort, which I am happy to say I have made successfully, to found, or rather to revive, an Institution for training up a native ministry for Australia, and to recommence operations in that Institution with a band of young men of piety and promise from home.

These young men were partly Presbyterians, partly Independents, and partly Baptists, with one Wesleyan Methodist, and it has been arranged, from the first, that in receiving a suitable education in common for the Christian ministry they should be left perfectly free to choose their future course, on the completion of their studies.

It has been alleged, indeed, that I required these young men to pay a higher rate for their passage (£20,) than it would have cost them elsewhere, as, for example, in the Government ships, and that I charged them a high rate for their education on board.

It must be recollected, however, that while the Government ships regularly take the full compliment of passengers allowed by Act of Parliament, and pack them together like pigs, setting at nought, in the case of married persons the decencies of life, the "Clifton," although full for the way in which she was fitted up, did not carry her compliment by seventy adults. But the fact is that a considerable number of the young men had been able to advance more than one-half the amount required, and I had to advance the remainder as I best could. And instead of charging them for their education on ship board, which is sufficiently absurd, I was myself charged, on their arrival, (and I considered it quite a matter of course), with their washing bill.

To meet the variously exigencies I have mentioned as well as to carry out the other objects of my voyage home, I had sold a property of my own, which I had inherited from my parents, in the County of Ayr in Scotland; and I happened to fall heir, during my stay in England, to a small property in Stirlingshire, which I could have easily disposed of, as I anticipated I should have had power to do, to the Member for the county, who wished to purchase it, for £2,000. But my deceased relative, the late proprietor, being desirous that it should not pass out of the hands of his family so soon, as he suspected it would, if it fell into mine, left me only the life rout, and secured it, under trusteeship, to my eldest son.

In these circumstances I had to borrow money for the accomplishment of the objects I have stated above wherever I could, and in particular from a respectable emigrant from the "Clifton," who is now in business in Geelong. I ought to have repaid him that money in a month after my arrival, but it was, unfortunately, not in my power; for independently of changes which had taken place in the value of property in which I was interested in Sydney, my position, as a person depending in no small degree for the accomplishment of his objects on the countenance and favour of the colonial public, was rendered for the moment one of peculiar difficulty from the rancorous hostility of an unprincipled local press. For I had been exposed, for three years successively, during my absence in England, to the unmitigated calumny and abuse of the only Daily Paper in Sydney, which systematically misrepresented my procedure in every possible way, and held me up to public reprobation, at the very time that I was sacrificing my own property for the good of the colony, and rendering it the greatest services it had ever received from any private individual, as little better than an unconvicted felon.

But the tide had eventually turned very strongly in my favour before I left Sydney, and arrangements were in progress there which, it was anticipated, would have enabled me to meet my obligation here very shortly. But as I considered I had claims on a portion of the community both here and in Van Diemen's Land, on the grounds I have already referred to, while at the same time I thought I might advance the interests of our Institution simultaneously. I undertook this voyage to Port Phillip and Van Diemen's Land for the express purpose of hastening the settlement I was so anxious to effect.

But the party to whom the money was due would not listen to these explanations - perhaps he was led to believe that I had no intention to pay him or that he would never be paid - and accordingly, availing himself of the privilege the law allows in such cases, he applied for and obtained a writ of capias ad respondendum and I was prevented from pursuing my voyage to Van Diemen's Land, and held bound for the immediate payment of the debt.

For my own part I cannot presume to say a single syllable in condemnation of this proceeding. The advance of the money in the first instance was a great favour, not only to myself personally, but to the colony, as it enabled me to effect objects of great importance to the public; and I trust I shall not be ungrateful for that favour, notwithstanding anything that has happened. Besides, there are evil spirits enough in this community to persuade any stranger in the colony that I am not to be trusted, that I had no intention to repay the money, that I am --------, but it is unnecessary to say that. It will be quite sufficient for the party I refer to to find, as I am satisfied he will, that he has not carried with him the sympathy of this Province.

The efforts I have thus been making in England, in conjunction with others of a similar kind which I have already detailed in another series of letters, were made with a view to ensure for the colony a thoroughly Evangelical Protestant ministry on the one hand, and a due portion of thoroughly Protestant population on the other. I have no personal hostility either to Irish men of to Irish women, even though they should be Roman Catholics. On the contrary, as a student of the University of Glasgow, upwards of thirty years ago, I advocated, as strongly as I could in my humble sphere, the great measure of Catholic emancipation.

As a colonist of New South Wales, and a writer in and on the colony, I have uniformly advocated equal rights and privileges for men of all classes and denominations. And as a member of the late Legislative Council, it was I who suggested, in a Select Committee, the recommendation which was adopted by the Council: that in all future immigration at the public expense, there should, as nearly as possible, be an equal number of immigrants from each of the three kingdoms. I would not ask whether the immigrants in any instance, are Protestants or Roman Catholics; but I would insist that there shall not be two-thirds Irish, and only one third English and Scotch, as has been the case in times past, in regard to immigration generally, and as I suspect it still is in regard to Irish Female Orphan Immigration.

It may be very convenient, doubtless, for Bishop James Alipius Gould, and Dean Nicholas Joseph Coffey, to get whole shiploads of Irish Roman Catholic girls out to this colony at the public expense, - to be married to Protestants, that they may brand the 'children' as their own property. But we, Englishmen and Scotchmen, without reference to creed at all, will insist, that for every Irishman and Irishwoman landed in this colony in future, at the public expense, there shall also be an Englishman and an Englishwoman, and a Scotchman and a Scotchwoman, landed too. It was principally to restore and to maintain this equilibrium in our Colonial community, that I went home to England in 1846; and although Earl Grey, a member for Melbourne, threw the numerously signed petitions which I carried home with me, on the subject, from Port Phillip, under the table, His Lordship is not likely to have such things in his power, or to be lord of the ascendant as colonial autocrat, much longer.

For whether the President of the 'United Provinces of Australia' be out or not, we will have justice to England, and justice to Scotland in this matter, not only for the future, but also for the past. The Immigration Records must be overhauled for the last ten or fifteen years, and wherever there has been a redundancy of either men or women in favor of any one of the three kingdoms as compared with the other two, the immigration from that kingdom must be stopped till equality has been re-established. Let Englishmen and Scotchmen only insist on this measure of equity and common sense, and all will be well bye and bye. Ireland is not to monopolize all the justice - England and Scotland must have their shares also.

I have only one short incident to add, in further illustration of the remark of M. Lamartine quoted at the commencement of this letter. In the month of January, 1839, when I left the colony for England, on my last voyage home but one, the Australian College in Sydney was in a highly flourishing condition; there being upwards of a hundred pupils in it, of whom about forty were boarders, the sons of the principal families of the colony. But, during my absence, the three Professors, who were all able men in their respective departments, had so completely identified themselves with sheep and cattle, land and stations, (the sheep and cattle mania being remarkably prevalent at the time) that the Institution, which had in the meantime been neglected, was entirely ruined for a time, and I had to give the three gentlemen £400 out of my own pocket to get rid of them altogether.

Previously to this payment, a Committee of Enquiry, consisting of gentlemen of the first standing in the colony, had ascertained that, in addition to the funds advanced by the Government and the public in aid of the Institution, I had advanced, of my own funds, not less than £4,477, for which I had been receiving neither principal or interest for years before. In these circumstances, the Local Government, at the insistence of some kind friends of my own, instituted an action against the Institution for the recovery of the funds advanced in aid of it, on the ground that it had not answered its purpose. I defended this action, 1st because the Institution was only in abeyance for a time, through no fault of mine: and 2nd, because it was never intended that the advance should be repaid; and after four years I gained the suit, but was saddled with the costs, as the Queen pays none in such cases. These costs had to be paid from the rental of my remaining property during my absence in England.

I am, Sir, your most obedient Servant,

JOHN DUNMORE LANG

P.S. - As some of my friends are anxious that I should reply to a charge brought against me in the "Sydney Herald," relative to a land order at Moreton Bay, which I am alleged to have disposed of to two parties simultaneously, I beg to reply very briefly (for I intend to do so at length in the proper time and place).

1. That the whole of the emigrants who went out to Moreton Bay had full value, in their passage out, for every sixpence they paid; the land orders they received being merely a guarantee that they should receive certain portions of land in addition.

2. That before the first ship (the "Fortitude") sailed, I ascertained from Mr. Hawes, both at the Colonial Office, and at his own house in Brighton, where I went to see him expressly on the subject, that the colonial government had power to give the land I sought for to carry out the arrangements I was contemplating, and would do so as a matter of course, although after the ship had sailed, a letter was written from Downing Street to the local government desiring them not to give the land.

3. That if the extent of land that was due for the "Fortitude," under the said arrangement had been received, there would have been sufficient to have met the whole of the land orders given, independently of the subsequent purchase, these was no evidence, where that purchase was effected, that the land originally promised had not been secured.

4. That the emigrants were told again and again, that although they should be put in occupation of the portions of land they were to receive, no deeds would be issued until the final arrangements of the Company then in formation should be completed, and a uniform system established of all cases.

5. That the order to select and to put certain parties in occupation of certain portions of land did not, in such circumstances, imply the transference of the absolute property of that land to such parties. It gave them a right to action in case of their being disturbed. It gave them a right to a deed eventually; but it did not give them from that moment absolute property of the land.

In such circumstances, J. H. Strudd, Esq., a member of Lloyds and as honorable a man as any in London, who had been the agent of all the six vessels I sent out, and who knew how the matter stood exactly, proposed, and I acceded to the proposal, that the land order for the purchase of 850 acres of land at Moreton Bay should be given as a temporary and collateral security for the payment of the portion of the charter-party of the only one of the six vessels of which there was any portion of such charter-party then unpaid. We both considered we had a right to do so; for the parties concerned were in equity in a totally different position from what they would have been in had they paid both for their passage and for the land separately. Besides there was no danger of the emigrants being disturbed in their possession. There was no intention to disturb them. All the inconvenience they were likely to experience was a little delay in the issue of their deeds.

But it is very easy to pick out, from a large series of complicated transactions, sufficient to hang a charge upon, when there is any person or party to be run down.

J. D. L.