The public breakfast to the Rev. Dr. John Dunmore Lang, M.C, took place yesterday morning at the Infant School, Bourke Street, his Worship the Mayor presiding. It had been calculated that the main building would afford sufficient accommodation for the company, but when the hour arrived people came crowding in in such numbers that it was found necessary to make provision for a much larger number than had been calculated upon, and considerable delay consequently occurred in getting the fresh detachment under weigh. Finally, the arrangements being completed, the Rev. John Ham having previously said grace, the breakfast was discussed and the business of the day proceeded with.

His Worship the Mayor, in a remarkably neat and appropriate speech, stated the object of the meeting.

Mr. Joseph Ankers Marsden, who was then called upon, spoke at considerable length, eulogising in the highest degree Dr. Lang's services to the district in the Legislative Council, particularly in the advocacy of separation and education, and concluded an eloquent and energetic address by the presentation to Dr. Lang, in the name of the Ladies of the Province, of a superbly bound copy of the Scriptures.

Mr. Mortimer, who was next called upon, spoke to the following effect: -

Mr. Mayor, With your permission, sir, rise I to address our Reverend guest and representative whose presence has called us together this morning, and as the object of our meeting is not to entertain this numerous audience with any oration of mine, but to hear from our respected friend the use of that trust we committed to his care two years ago, and as I am sure, having had ocular demonstration of the fact, that he has not hid his talent in a napkin but can render a good account of his stewardship, I will proceed to discharge the trust I have had the honor to be commissioned to execute without further comment.

Reverend and Dear Sir, - It is in the name and on the behalf of the fairer portion of our race that I have been honoured with the pleasure, the most gratifying task of presenting to you, our worthy and indefatigable member for Port Phillip, a token of their respect, esteem, and approbation for the vigilance, devotedness and untiring zeal, you have ever manifested in watching over the interests of this province, as the uniform maintainer of our rights, the determined supporter of civil and religious liberty, the staunch and undeviating friend of education, and our unflinching advocate and champion in the great cause of separation. Permit me, sir, without further detaining you or this numerous assembly, to express to you our warmest thanks, our strongest confidence and most cheerfully, most, heartily, and most unitedly to tender to you these, our expressions and feelings, with this small tribute of respect and esteem entrusted to my charge for presentation to you from the Ladies of Australia Felix.

At the conclusion of his address, Mr. Mortimer presented to Dr. Lang a superb pulpit gown, made in the regular Geneva style, but of surpassing richness of material.

Dr. Lang then said: -

Mr. Mayor, Ladies and Gentlemen, I confess I feel at this moment in somewhat like the awkward predicament of an unfortunate countryman of mine, who for some high crime or misdemeanor had been sentenced to death, and who, when some kind friend was condoling with him on his unfortunate situation, and endeavouring to raise his courage to the requisite pitch, observed, in the Doric dialect of my native land, "Man, I wad hae thocht naething o't, if I had only been used to it."

Ladies and gentlemen, the very flattering reception with which you have this day honored me, accompanied as it has been with so handsome and valuable a testimonial of regard from a quarter which renders it far more than doubly estimable, the Ladies of the Province, is something that I have been very little used to indeed in my past life; and therefore if I should acquit myself rather awkwardly in acknowledging it, you must just do me the additional kindness to impute it to the real cause, for to tell the honest truth, "I wad hae thocht far less of it, if I had been better used to it."

I have been used indeed to something so very different, that the apostle Paul's description of his own position at Ephesus, where he tells us he had to fight with beasts, has often occurred to me as by no means an incorrect description of my own; with this difference, however, that mine have always been beasts in a figurative sense only. Sometimes they have assumed the form of civil officers and civil governors, who have behaved notwithstanding, as uncivilly to me as if they had been armed with tusks and claws; as for instance in the late government persecution of our unfortunate College in Sydney; in which case, however, to continue the metaphor, we have just been safely delivered out of the jaws of the lion, and out of the paws of the bear. Sometimes again, as some of you are doubtless aware, from recent demonstrations even in this province, they have taken the form of gentlemen in gowns and bands, like "Satan transformed into angels of light;" but that is a form in which they are very easily disposed of.

In short, ladies and gentlemen, I have been so much accustomed to be called everything but a gentleman, in certain quarters, and to be treated accordingly, that I have almost come to consider it the natural and necessary stimulus for a speech on any public occasion, something absolutely indispensable towards "getting the steam up." If therefore I shall come far short, as I fear I shall, of your reasonable expectations on the present occasion, you must recollect, that I am not exclusively to blame for it, for you are killing me with unwonted, with unmerited kindness, insomuch that it has almost deprived me of the power of utterance. Considering the nature of the handsome present I have just had the honour of receiving at the hands of so many of the ladies of Australia Felix, and considering that the fair donors belong, as I believe, to almost all the religious communions of this provincial capital, I am warranted in regarding it as an expression of kindly feeling towards myself as a minister of religion, as well as towards the object of my visit as an advocate for entire religious freedom in this land. It was kindly and delicately done, as everything indeed must be that comes from such a quarter. It was peculiarly so, in the peculiar circumstances in which I happen to stand as a minister of religion in this colony, and I therefore receive it with real heartfelt acknowledgements and value it the more highly, I should be sorry, indeed, to put a forced construction on any action or proceeding of any kind; but considering that my publicly declared object in visiting this province on the present occasion was, to advance the cause of entire Religious liberty, that every man might be left to support his own clergy, and not be compelled by the State to support his neighbour's also, I think I am warranted in regarding the handsome testimonial I have had the honour of receiving from the Ladies of the Province as an expression of their good wishes for success and prosperity to that cause. The subject of entire religious freedom, to which I have adverted, is a subject on which there is not only a great want of information, but a great deal of misapprehension both at home and abroad.

If there are any Jews, therefore, present in this assembly, as possibly there may be, I would tell them that the attainment of the ultimate object of my present visit to this province would entirely relieve them in all time coming from taxation in any form for the support of a christian clergy of any communion; and as British subjects, who have a right to think for themselves, I presume it will scarcely be denied that they have also a right to protest against all such taxation as a serious grievance.

If there are any Roman Catholics present, as I suppose there may, I would refer them for authority on this subject to their own great Dau over the water, and their own Irish Bishops who have again and again repudiated the offer of endowment, and scouted the idea of being made stipendiary to the State in any way. If there are any Episcopalians here present, as I know there ire, I would ask them, if they think their church would have been regularly receding and giving aay, as it has been for two centuries past, before the constantly advancing tide of Romanism in Ireland if it had not been oppressed and kept down with the incubus of its State connection; I would refer them to the Episcopalians in America, who are all decided Voluntaries, and especially to the late Bishop Hobart, of New York, who told his brother-bishops in England, when on a visit to that country, that their church would never have its proper weight and influence with the great mass of the people of England till it was entirely separate from the State.

If there are any Presbyterians here present, as I see there are many, judging by the strongly marked Scottish features I see around me, I would refer them to the recent triumphs of the Free Church of Scotland, and ask them whether the Presbyterian Church ever occupied so high and influential a position in that country since the Reformation, as it does at this moment under the auspices of those great and glorious men who came forth so recently, with a whole million of the Scottish people at their back, from the land of Egypt and the house of bondage.

If there are any Wesleyans here present, as I see there are, I would ask them whether it was in a state of freedom, as a Church of Christ, or in bondage to the State, that they achieved the triumphs of a hundred years past that will hand down to posterity the name of their founder as one of the greatest and most illustrious of men.

I need not speak of Independents or Baptists who have long since taken up and fortified their position as one of entire religious freedom, and sworn a solemn oath that in all matters affecting the Church and Kingdom of Christ, such 'Britons' as they are "never shall be slaves."

I cannot conclude this expression of my heart-felt acknowledgements to the ladies of Australia Felix for the kindness they have shewn me on the present occasion, and the valuable and appropriate presents they have made me, without considering the judiciousness of their choice in choosing the right end of the day for the purpose, and the good example they have thereby set to the colony. For had the other end of the day been chosen for such a demonstration as the present, I fear greatly that my countrymen who are rather warm-blooded on such occasions would have been inclined take so many "cups of kindness for Auld Lang Syne," that his Worship the Mayor might have found it difficult to keep the peace among us. And you know it would not have been creditable for the gentlemen, any more than for the ladies of Melbourne to have sent me, "ower the hills an' far awa" to Sydney, roarin fou. I might have been half seas over in that case before I had got overland; and the very drivers of the mail, when they heard me hiccuping away to Sydney, would have been inclined to say, surely this is not a fit and proper person to represent us after all.

In addition therefore to all their other acts of kindness I have to thank the ladies for saving my reputation which might have stood but an indifferent chance, if they had not made their 'cups of kindness' tea-cups.

Councillor Greeves rose and said -

The preceding speakers had alluded to the learned guest at the table as a divine and friend of the people in the cause of education, and had accordingly presented him with appropriate tokens of esteem - one, the volume on whose precepts all education should be based; the other with the elegant and ladylike present a robe suited to his office; but although an opponent of the Doctor's on many political grounds, at the first election, he felt bound to offer him their tribute of thanks for his exertions in the cause of Port Phillip - especially of Separatlon. We had indeed to thank him for a general indefatigable attention to his duty as a Representative, but especially for his exertions for Separation, the Franchise, Education, and a cheap system of Postage.

The honorable and learned representative would go back to Sydney able to tell his colleagues in the Council, that Port Phillip was determined to have separation; that the people are united as one man to use all lawful means of procuring separation; and of getting it if not from one party from the other. And if after all their exertions they were unable to obtain it from the Colonial Government, that they were prepared to go before the Imperial Legislature and procure that from them in spite of the tyrannical majority at Sydney. He trusted that with his colleagues for this district, Dr. Lang would continue to exert the energies of his powerful and capacious mind in the cause of separation, and moved thus the thanks of the meeting be given to Dr. Lang for his exertions in the cause of Port Phillip, especially with respect to separation; and trusting he would persevere in that just cause.

Mr. Langlands seconded the motion with a few exceedingly appropriate observations, and concluded by presenting the Rev. Dr. Lang with a purse of forty-five sovereigns which had been collected after twelve o'clock on the previous day.

Councillor John Pascoe Fawkner followed Mr. Langlands bearing high and honorable testimony to Dr. Lang's career as a legislator, and expressing a hope that the comparative smallness of the purse presented would be attributed rather to the very hurried manner in which it was got up, than to any absence of an united wish in the whole community to bear testimony to Dr. Lang's invaluable services to the District.

Dr. Lang then spoke as follows: -

Mr. Mayor, ladies and gentlemen, if I were saying that the vote that has just been so cordially passed, and the very substantial proof of your sincerity with which it has been accompanied, was only another and improved edition of the previous demonstration - the pulpit gown and Bible - some of you would be sure to say, what an uncourteous man that is to be making invidious comparisons between the ladies and the gentlemen; while others would be saying, what a worldly minded minister that is to be looking more at the gentlemen's purse than at the ladies' pulpit gown and Bible!

And yet you have put me in so very awkward a predicament by this most unexpected proof of your regard that I really do not know how to get out of it without laying myself open to some such imputation as these. You have so surprised and astonished me, that I really don't know how to tell you what I think and what l feel, permit me then to relieve myself from so awkward a dilemma by giving you some account of the manner in which I have endeavoured to discharge the trust which the inhabitants of this district have done me the honour for the present to repose in my hands.

You are all doubtless aware that the case of a clerical representative of the people was unheard of in the history of British colonization till it was realized in my own particular instance. It had occurred twice in the history of the United States of America in the case of two very eminent men in their respective periods - The Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, President of New Jersey College and the Rev. Dr. Timothy Dwight, President of Yale College - but it had never occurred, as far as I know in any of our colonies. It is no wonder therefore, that the principle should have been strongly objected to, as well as the individual in whose favour it was to be established, when certain of the electors of this district thought proper to nominate me to that high office.

Leaving the principle out of view for a moment, permit me to remind you of some of the prophecies that were put forth in various quarters at the period I refer to in regard to myself individually. It was alleged therefore that my getting into the Council would be one of the greatest calamities that had ever befallen the colony - that I would make it the arena of my own personal quarrels - that I would transform it into a perfect bear-garden - that, like another Ishmael, my hand would be against every man, and every man's hand against me.

I need not ask this assembly alter the vote that has just been passed, whether all or any of these prophecies have been fulfilled, but I must state for your information that although certain of my honourable colleagues did regard me with some suspicion and distrust in the first instance as it was natural they should in such circumstances, these feelings very speedily gave way, to be succeeded by a feeling of perfect cordiality and harmony which has continued uninterrupted to the present hour. Indeed I may safely say for the Port Phillip members generally, both those who are still in that capacity and those who were so for a season that have of their own accord since left the field, that they have honestly and sincerely endeavoured to do the best they could for their constituents in every possible way, without jealousy of each other, without suspicion, without distrust. The only subject of regret they have had is that they have not always understood your interests so well as I trust you will do when you have a Legislative Council in Melbourne, and that notwitstanding all their efforts they have been able to do you so little service.

In regard to the principle of clerical representation in the Legislative Council it would be preposterous to discuss the question so long as the Imperial Government reserves to itself the right of appointing a minister of religion to the far more influential and important office of a member of the Executive Council. Bishop William Grant Broughton has incomparably more weight and influence in the government of the colony as a member of that Council than any member of the Legislative Council can possibly have. For instance every grant of money for religious purposes under the General Church Act of the colony, not only for the Episcopalians, but also the Presbyterians, for the Roman Catholics, and for the Wesleyans, must have his sanction as a member of that Council, which is certainly a great grievance to these other communions.

Again it is well known that the Legislative Council has no right under the present constitution to interfere with the Land Revenues of the colony, which are managed exclusively by the Governor and the Executive Council. Now it was in virtue of this extensive right to deal with these Revenues that the Governor, with the advice of the Executive Council, issued the famous Squatting Regulations that have excited universal indignation throughout the pastoral portion and interest of this colony, subjecting the colonial stockholders prospectively to a periodical taxation of half a million sterling, by compelling them to purchase land to that amount at the present exorbitant minimum price, in addition to the grievance of being obliged to pay double, triple, or quadruple licenses in addition to an assessment on their stock. Now it is notorious in our part of the colony that if there is a single member of the Executive Council who approves of these oppressive measures, and who backs up the Governor in carrying them out, not only against the Legislative Council but against the voice of the whole colony it is Bishop Broughton.

Now one good turn you know deserves another. How do you think did his Excellency repay the Bishop for his anti-colonial services in backing his Excellency up in his Squatting Regulations? Why, just by backing up the Bishop in his anti-colonial agitation against the General System of Education which was recommended by a majority of the Legislative Council, and demanded, I will say in the face of all assertions to the contrary, by a vast majority of the intelligence of the colony. Sir George Gipps, it is well known, was once highly favorable to a general system of education, and in the year 1839 when declaring his own unbiassed opinion on the subject, he made one of the best speeches in favour of such a system that has ever been made in this colony. It would seem, however, to use a very vulgar expression, that "his mother did not know he was out" when he made that speech; for he has since eaten back every word of it at the particular instance, I believe, of his friend the Bishop.

And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, on the well known principle of "I serve your turn you serve mine," which has notoriously been acted on for some time between those two influential members of the Executive Council, the stockholders are to be subjected to the tyranny of the New Squatting Regulations on the one hand, and the colony is to be tricked out of a General System of Education on the other. Talk then, as was done some time ago, of the propriety and necessity of shutting the Legislative Council against ministers of religion as Representatives of the People! Why, what possible influence either for good or for evil, can any minister of religion have in that capacity in the Legislative Council, compared with the paramount and overwhelming influence which a minister of religion actually has in the Executive Council as a nominee of the Crown?

Let both Councils be shut against ministers of religion, and I shall be content, as I told you from the first; I should then back out most willingly, and we should be able to start fair, with a fair field and no favour. But so long as we have the incubus of a Tory Bishop, as a nominee of the Crown, in the Executive Council, I shall make no apology for being where I am, so long as it shall please the people, and be deemed conducive to the real welfare and advancement of the colony, that I should be there.

I recollect the inhabitants of this district were told at the last general election that the hole in the Act of Parliament, through which I passed into the Legislative Council, was a mere oversight on the part of the framers of that act, a mere accident. Now I believe it was no such thing - I believe it was put there on purpose. You have all heard of the Englishman at Canton who employed a Chinaman to make a new coat for him and who gave him as a pattern to make it by an old coat, which was so much the worse for the wear and tear that it had a large hole in one of the elbows. The coat was made exactly after the pattern, but to the horror of the Englisliman, the fearful hole in the elbows of the old coat was reproduced or imitated most exactly in the new one. Now nobody would have said that the hole was either a wear or a tear, or an oversight or an accident; it was put there on purpose, and so, as I said, was the hole in the Act of Parliament that let me into the Council. But I grant that it wasn't put there for me; Lord Stanley, not satisfied with the vast power and influence which the Bishop had as a member of the Executive Council under a Government that needed him in that capacity, wished to have him into the Legislative Council also, I presume, to shake his bratty at the bad boys there, and keep them in order. But really although Bishop Broughton thought it infra dig to go into the Legislative Council at all, notwithstanding the offer to admit him, it would have been out of the question for Lord Stanley to have excluded ministers of religion from that council when he was determined to keep Bishop Broughton in so much more influential a situation in the other. And so it was that the hole that was left in the Act to let in the Bishop actually let in me; from which it may perhaps be inferred that a Bishop and a Presbyterian minister are much about the same size and dimensions after all in the 19th century, just as they were in the first, when there was no difference between them, if the same hole in an Act of Parliament that lets in one, will let in the other also.

It is well known to you all that the Port Phillip members generally have attached themselves to the liberal portion of the council, I have almost uniformly been opposed to this Government. And considering the arbitrary measures which the Government has been putting forth, the determination it evinced to govern by minorities, or in other words against the voice of the people, and the unceremonious manner in which it has repeatedly set aside the result of the solemn deliberations and protracted labours of the council, I think you will give them credit for having done so. Of late indeed it has been attempted, by certain retainers and expectants of the Government, to make the colonial public believe that the Legislative Council, as at present composed, does not afford a fair representation of the sentiments and views of the general constituency of the colony; and certain of the friends and supporters of the Government have for some time past been standing as the poet says erectis auribus, with pricked-up ears, (and some of them have pretty long ones,) to catch the delicious sounds as they issue from the service portion of the press, and to repeat them whenever they have an opportunity. But if the present Legislature does not represent the views and sentiments of the constituency of the colony, his Excellency has the remedy entirely in his own hands, - he may dissolve the council whenever he pleases.

For my own part I have always been favourable to the principle of 'short Parliaments,' both at home and abroad, and considering that two years are as long a period in the history of a rapidly advancing colony as seven years are in that of the mother country, I am strongly of opinion that no Colonial Parliament or Council should in any instance sit for a longer period than two years. The people have a right to be consulted in regard to their opinion of their Representatives at the end of that period, and when the friends of the Government are putting forth the impudent assertion that the council no longer enjoys the confidence of the public, the Government can have no excuse for not affording the public the opportunity of expressing that opinion in a constitutional way. But the simple and the only explanation of the fact that there is to be no dissolution, is, that his Excellency won't venture to dissolve the council, lest a worse thing should befal him. He knows right well, and nobody knows better, that the present council in all its struggles for freedom does represent the views and feelings of the colonists; he knows that the opposition to his arbitrary measures would be greatly strengthened by a dissolution, and that the votes of censure which the present council has virtually passed upon his Government would be confirmed and strengthened by their successors; and he has, therefore, made up his mind to do the best be can with 'his bad bargain.'

For my own part I have been desirous that a dissolution should take place for months past; for I felt assured that in that event there are at least half a dozen pairs of old boots in the present council that might be sent to the cobler for any good they are of to the colony, but would certainly never be sent to the council again. But I am sorry to say there is no prospect of such a consummation, "a consummation so devoutly to be wished," simply because his Excellency the Governor anticipates no good from the change -

for his Excellency knows right well that a change would be no change for the better for him.

Ladies and gentlemen, - it is an outrage upon the common sense of mankind, it is a libel upon the British constitution, to assert that a Government conducted on such arbitrary principles as those on which the Government of this colony is conducted has any resemblance to the free and enlightened Government of our mother land: and we should be utterly unworthy of the name of Britons, if we did not protest on every suitable occasion against the prodigious wrong of being tricked out of our birthright under the mockery of such institutions as have been granted to this colony by Act of Parliament, of being subjected to a domination as irrational and oppressive as that of the Grand Turk himself. For my own part I never cease to protest against this wrong, whether as an individual or as a member of council, for this reason simply that I firmly believe that the cause of general enlightenment, of public and private virtue, of pure and undefiled religion, including the general prosperity and advancement of the whole colony in all its interests, civil and sacred, temporal and eternal, will be promoted just in proportion as the Government of the colony is assimilated in its principles and practice to the free Government of our native land. As an individual I have nothing to expect from any change for the better that may hereafter take place in their Government of this colony.

I have no place or office to look for under a better Government than the present - no such office for instance as a bishopric, with a salary of £2000 a year and a nominee seat in the Executive Council, to help the Secretary of State's Governor to enforce his New Squatting Regulations, and to keep the colony out of a General System of Education. But having deliberately selected this land as my adopted country from my very boyhood, it has ever been my heart's desire and my humble endeavour, that it may become the glory of all the lands that call Britain their mother, and that the future historian may say of her, in comparison with all the other colonies of the Empire, Many daughters have done virtusly, but thou hast excelled them all.

Dr. Lang then entered at considerable length into a review of the more prominent measures which had been before the Legislative Council, more particularly separation and immigration. In reference to the former measure he said that argument there had been none offered, the only attempt at any thing of the kind having been made by the Colonial Secretary who assigned as a reason for withholding separation from Port Phillip, that if the application were granted, Moreton Bay would be calling out for separation also. This, he said, was like the story of the petted child, who having been indulged for years by his mother, was sent to school to receive instruction in the alphabet. It was in vain, however, that the master endeavoured to get him to say A, he had obviously made up his mind against it, and say or do what the master would, he could not get the urchin to say A, and he had no shift, therefore, but to send him home to his mother. The tender parent grieved at such stubbornness on the part of the child, soothed and carressed him to find out the cause, and finally got him after a good deal of blubbering to acknowledge that his reason was "If I had said A they would have made me say B too." This was precisely the Colonial Secretary's argument - he will not say A to the Port Phillippians but for fear the Moreton Bay folks should want him to say B also.

In reference to the same subject, Dr. Lang said he had ascertained since his arrival here that the sum abstracted from this province, over and above the whole expenditure, was no less a sum than £21,183 4s. 5d., and he characterised the robbing us of this money as not one whit morally better than the conduct of the foot-pad who demands the traveller's money, or his life.

Dr. Lang also gave a detailed account of an interview the Port Phillip members had with the Governor when every request they had to prefer on account of the province was met with the miserly Scotch-wife's answer to the beggar - "ye canna be saired;" irritated at last by the incessant refusals Mr. Walker said the people would never submit to such injustice, they would be driven into rebellion, and what would his Excellency do then? At first, Dr. Lang said, he felt sorry that any thing of the kind had been hinted at, but the Governor, quite with the air of a man to whom such a prospect was familiar, answered at once that he was quite prepared for their doing so. As a man of peace he fervently hoped that the time was fast approaching when the absurd terms 'a just and necessary war' would cease to be heard among men, but when he heard his Excellency so promptly replying to such a question - the significance of his manner, plainly intimating that he thought he had troops in readiness to keep the colonists in subjection.

Having travelled over the country in which the American Colonies had fought the battle of independence, this reply had led him to compare the position of the two countries should it ever unhappily chance that this unnatural warfare should be forced upon the colony, and he could not but say that the advantages were greatly in favour of this colony. America was intersected in every direction by noble rivers which gave access to the interior to war-ships of any burden, and enabled the assailants to make their advance into the very centre of their operations. There was no access of any kind to the interior of this colony for hostile troops, the nature of the country presenting insuperable obstacles to any kind of force excepting cavalry, and, of course, the colonists having the horses in their own hands, would not in such a case be likely to be overgenerous in supplying the enemy. Besides it was not at all likely that British soldiers would consider butchering their fellow-countrymen at all a congenial trade, and it would not be a matter much to be wondered at if they preferred the quiet ownership of a few sheep or cattle in the interior of the colony, to shooting at, or being shot by their countrymen for sixpence a day.

The Dr. then continued his review of the past session of the Legislative Council at greater length than our space will admit of our following him, and he finally sat down after a speech of an hour and a half's duration amidst the most tremendous applause.

Alderman Kerr then moved that the Mayor do leave the chair, and that Dr. Macarthur do take it, when the thanks of the meeting were presented by acclamation to his Worship for his kindness in presiding, and for the judicious and impartial manner in which he had conducted the business of the meeting. The Mayor briefly returned thanks and the meeting dissolved with a unanimous burst of cheering for Dr Lang.