The announcement by telegram from Sydney in yesterday's issue of the death of the Rev. John Dunmore Lang, D.D., notes the removal of another prominent actor in the early history of Australia. His career was more especially identified with New South Wales, where he had passed more than half a century, but he was also connected with Victoria and Queensland by the active part he took in the agitation which ultimately resulted in separation from the parent colony. Dr Lang was not a great man, not even a wise man, but by his energy, pertinacity, and power he was enabled to impress his mark on the early history of colonisation on this continent.

Dr. Lang was born at Greenock in the concluding year of the last century. His father was a farmer, and, like many of his class in Scotland, was possessed with the aspiration of dedicating his son to the ministry. After receiving an elementary education in the parish school he was sent to the Glasgow University, where, in the year 1820, he took his M.A. degree. He received the degree of doctor of divinity from the same University in 1825. On June 1st, 1820, he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Irvine. His attention was early directed to Australia then almost a terra incognita, save as a receptacle for the criminals banished from the old country. He determined to leave Scotland, and in September, 1822, he was ordained by the Irvine Presbytery as minister for the Scots' National Church, Sydney.

He arrived in Sydney in the year 1823, and met with a warm welcome from his fellow countrymen. The court house was placed at his disposal to hold service in, and the energy and ability displayed in his preaching attracted what, in those days of infancy, might be styled large congregations. Subscriptions were liberally promised towards the erection of a church, the Governor, Sir Thomas Brisbane, himself a Scotchman, heading the list. Dr. Lang, however, who was never remarkable for tempering zeal with discretion, soon found himself in difficulties with the constituted authorities. He offended the Governor by the manner in which an application for state aid to the Presbyterian body was made, endowment being claimed on the ground that aid had been previously granted or promised to Roman Catholics. The Governor declared that one of the glories of the Church of England was her toleration; but, nettled at the tone assumed by Dr. Lang, replied that when by private donation a suitable temple of religion had been erected by the Presbyterians, and when the same judgment was shown in the choice of teachers as had been exhibited in the selection of the Roman Catholic clergymen, the Executive would give its countenance and support. Dr. Lang was not inclined tamely to submit to rebuke. "Toleration," he replied, "was not the glory of the Church of England, but of the British Constitution. Scotchmen were not therefore reduced to the necessity of receiving toleration as a boon from the Church of England. Their civil and religious liberties were won for them by the valour of their forefathers." The consequence of this quarrel was that the Governor declined to assent to the request for endowment, and withdrew his name from the list of subscribers.

Dr. Lang, undaunted by the want of official patronage, proceeded to build his church, and after he had completed his arrangements went to England, where he laid his complaint before the Secretary of State for the Colonies. There he was more successful, and in l826 he returned to Sydney bearing with him a direction from Earl Bathurst to the authorities in New South Wales that one-third of the cost of the Presbyterian Church should be paid by the state, and that a salary of £300 a year should be paid to Dr. Lang out of colonial funds.

Bonwick ascribes to Dr. Lang the real honour of introducing and establishing the Presbyterian system of church and schools into Australia. Dr. Lang was instrumental in establishing the Australian College in 1832, and to effect this object he made very considerable personal sacrifices. This institution was designed to be open to all denominations, without sectarian or dogmatic religious teaching.

His relations with his ecclesiastical brethren were, however far from harmonious. He held strong views, and was in the habit of expressing them strongly, caring little for the conciliation of others. Discord began at a very early period of the church history in New South Wales. Shortly after returning from a visit to England in 1841 he joined the Presbyterian Synod of Australia, but in the following year he pursued a course adverse to the views of the majority of the synod, and was censured for exhibiting a contumacious contempt for the authority of the church by refusing to appear when cited to answer the charges made against him. One of the principal of these charges was that he had from the pulpit termed the Presbytery "a synagogue of Satan," and declared that "they were actuated by a spirit of rancorous hostility towards him which could have emanated only from the father of evil." He was deposed from his ministerial office, and the deposition was confirmed by the church courts in Scotland, first by the Presbytery of Irvine, who had ordained him, and then by the General Assembly, who refused to receive his petition of appeal. Dr. Lang applied for relief to the Court of Session, and the Lord Ordinary, Lord Jarvisford, held that the decision against Dr. Lang was illegal, having been come to in his absence, and reversed it. The Sydney Presbytery endeavoured to oust Dr. Lang from the possession of church property, but after a long course of litigation the matter was finally decided, in the year 1862 in favour of Dr. Lang.

Dr. Lang held the ministry of the Scots' Church, Sydney, from 1823 until the end. On the 17th December, 1872, he celebrated the jubilee of his ministry, and on that occasion he received an address from the presbytery of Sydney and was also presented with a Bible from the elders of his church, and with an Encyclopaedia Britannica from a number of subscribers. He had likewise the satisfaction of hearing the most flattering encomiums on his political career from the rival leaders Sir Henry Parkes and Sir John Robertson and of receiving from members of different religious denominations expressions of their esteem and goodwill.

The position of Dr. Lang as a politician has, however, in a great measure, overshadowed his calling as a minister of religion. From his arrival in the colony he took an active and indeed a pugnacious, interest in all social and public questions, while his representative career lasted with a brief interval from 1843 until he retired from Parliamentary life in 1869, over a quarter of a century.

In 1835 Dr. Lang, who was dissatisfied with the colonial press which then existed, started the "Colonist," a weekly journal, in which he gave utterance to his views on public questions. 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 of devoting the proceeds to immigration. He maintained that the waste lands of the colony were not the property of the actual inhabitants, but of the whole 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 Secretary of State for the Colonies, but a land system on a different basis was afterwards established by Mr. Wentworth.

Dr. Lang was always 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 progressive sales of building allotments in Sydney, and by resuming and selling the 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 great offence to the possessors of the land he proposed to resume. A wordy warfare followed, lasting for years, and the struggle entailed on Dr. Lang much expense and considerable annoyance. He was censured by Lord Goderich for the indiscreet publication of the letter, and the Legislative Council also punished him by a vote of censure. His efforts in the cause of immigration, though not always wisely directed were not lessened by the obstacles in his path. 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 300 persons. He lectured on immigration on several occasions during his frequent visits to England, and used all 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 as one of the representative members of the first Legislative Council under the constitution of 1842. He was returned for the district of Port Phillip, now the colony of Victoria. His principal aim in entering political life he declared to be to put a stop in the introduction of immigration to the enormous preponderance of Irish Roman Catholics, and to secure for the colony a general system of education adapted to its wants. On the education question he had originally been an opponent to the introduction of the Irish National system, but after a visit to Ireland he found reason for changing his views, and afterwards advocated its adoption. A select committee of the Legislative Council, of which Mr. Robert Lowe, now a distinguished member of the Imperial Parliament, was chairman, had the subject of education under consideration in 1844, and recommended the national system. At the request of Mr. Lowe, who had resigned his seat as a nominee member in consequence of a disagreement with the Government, Dr. Lang moved the adoption of the report, and, as he complacently records, spoke for three hours, and was listened to with great attention by Mr. Lowe.

The separation movement was one with which Dr. Lang was very intimately identified. A visit to the United States had led him to the conclusion that much of the progress there visible was due to the workable size of the states, and he came back to Australia convinced that the example was one to be followed here. When he broached the idea to the residents of Port Phillip, who were labouring under a just sense of dissatisfaction at the neglect they experienced from the Central Government, he received such encouragement that he was induced to submit a motion in the Council. In 1844 he proposed the separation of Port Phillip from New South Wales, and its erection into a distinct and separate colony. The six Port Phillip representatives voted for the motion, but the only member among the 30 representatives of New South Wales who gave in his adhesion was Mr. Lowe. Not discouraged, Dr. Lang drew up a petition, which was numerously signed and sent home to Her Majesty. Lord Stanley gave a favourable reply, but separation was not consummated until the year 1851. The services rendered by Dr. Lang were recognised by the Victorian Parliament, who in 1872 voted him a sum of £1,000.

Dr. Lang was also a warm advocate of the separation of Queensland from New South Wales. His interest in the Moreton Bay district dated back to the years 1848 and 1849, when he introduced there, at considerable personal expense, about 600 immigrants. His services in the cause of separation were acknowledged by the Queensland Legislature. He was the promoter of the land order system, Mr. Herbert, the first Colonial Secretary of Queensland, declaring "that Dr. Lang might fairly claim to have been the promoter of the land order system."

Dr. Lang was a co-worker with Mr. Lowe and other prominent colonists in the opposition to the re-imposition of the transportation system to New South Wales. The agitation lasted for some years, from 1846 to 1850 or 1851, Earl Grey, who was then Secretary of State for the Colonies, persisting in his determination to force the system on the colony. Ultimately, however he had to give way, and the Order in Council declaring New South Wales a place where convicts might be sent was revoked. Dr. Lang was elected member for Sydney in 1850, when a vacancy occurred, defeating the transportation candidate. He presented a petition to the Legislature against transportation, signed by 36,589 persons. In 1849, he addressed a letter to Earl Grey, on the subject of his lordships misgovernment of the Australian colonies during the three years he held office, couched in language which gave great offence.

In September, 1851, he was elected at the head of the poll for Sydney, Messrs. John Lamb and W. C. Wentworth being his colleagues, but he resigned almost immediately, and went to England. During his absence a new Constitution Act was passed, containing a clause rendering ministers of religion ineligible for Parliament, and he was thus precluded from entering the Legislature for a time. This clause was repealed in 1857, and at the general election in 1859 he was again elected for Sydney. After the introduction of responsible government he was elected three times for Sydney West - twice at the head of the poll, and on the last occasion he was but 22 votes behind Sir John Robertson. He finally retired from the Parliamentary arena in November, 1869.

Among other measures advocated by him during his political career was the extension and equalising of the representation (in 1843), the establishment of a uniform postage rate of 2d. (in 1844), triennial Parliaments, a single Chamber Legislature, cheap and efficient railway communication, and permanent discontinuance of state aid to religion.

In 1839 he visited New Zealand, and wrote to Lord Durham urging the Government to take possession of those islands.

During his long connexion with Australia he visited England nine times. In 1846 he was examined before a committee of the House of Commons on the question of transportation. Dr. Lang was a voluminous writer. He is the author of a history of New South Wales, which ran through four editions the first issued in 1834, the latest in 1875. The author is himself the principal character in the work, and its value as an historical record is greatly impaired by the prejudiced and unfriendly spirit which pervades his judgment of his contemporaries. His other works are "Origin and Migration of Polynesian Natives," 1834; "Transportation and Colonisation," 1837; "New Zealand in 1839, Position and Prospects of its Inhabitants"; "Religion and Education in America," 1840; "Cook's Land, Australia," 1847; "Phillip's Land," 1847; "Freedom and Independence for Australia," 1852; "The Coming Event," 1870; "Aurora Australis," a series of poems, 1826. He was also a ready pamphleteer, and wrote on a variety of subjects. He was an honorary member of the African Institute of France, of the American Oriental Society and of the Literary Institute of the University of Olinda, Brazil.

Dr. Lang was married in 1831, on the voyage out to Australia, to Miss Wilhelmina Mackay, a fellow passenger. He had 10 children, of whom one son and two daughters now survive.

The career of Dr. Lang embraces a period of wonderful interest to Australians. When, more than 55 years ago he landed on the shores of Port Jackson, Sydney was a convict settlement, and this great continent an unknown land. He saw the foundations of a nation laid, and was an instrument in the work. He was a witness of the wonderful progress and prosperity of these colonies, and did not pass away until he had seen the handful of settlers ripen into a community numbering nearly two millions, and this unknown country explored and settled throughout the eastern half. He lived through the vice-royalties of nine Governors of New South Wales, commencing with Sir Thomas Brisbane, and ending with Sir Hercules Robinson. He was a man of indomitable energy, of liberal views, and of considerable ability. Although his career was disfigured on many occasions by an overweening vanity, by a hasty temper, and by a want of discretion, yet he achieved a position among the early colonists of Australia which will not readily be forgotten.

He thought little of money for money's sake, and readily sacrificed pecuniary advantage to obtain the object at heart. We have the testimony of the Hon. S. D. Gordon, given at a public meeting in Sydney in 1870, "that if Dr. Lang had retained the property which he had disposed of from time to time for the furtherance of objects which he conceived of value and importance to the country, he would have been worth not less than £100,000."