AN AUSTRALIAN FOUNDER

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 111, 11 May 1923, Page 4

AN AUSTRALIAN FOUNDER

JOHN DUNMORB LANG CBNTEN

ARY.

A brief cable mesgßge published on Wednesday referred to trie celebration in Sydney of the centenary of. the Bey. John Dunmore Lang. The Rev. ' Mr. Lang was born in Scotland in 1799. He entered the ministry of the Presbyterian Church, and came to Australia in 1823, settling in Sydney. He took a very active interest in politics, ahd became an elective nvember of the Legislative' Council before the grant of self-government to New South Wales. He... visited the United Kingdom several times, and during one of his Homeward journeys touched at the Bay of Islands. As a result of the impressions he formed of New Zealand, Dr. Lang, on his arrival in England, published an open letter to Lord John Russell, in which he strenuously advocated the immediate colonisation of New Zealand, preferably by the Government, inasmuch as colonisation by medium of a private corporation was likely _ to lead to grave abuses, particularly jn connection\with the Native race. Dr. Lang was a powerful advocate of colonial independence, holding that it was,"a law of Nature and an ordinance of God" that after a brief period of tutelage, colonies should "hive off" and be fcome independent nations. In 1852 he published a scholarly work, in which his views on colonisation and independence were Bet out at length. The book was entitled, "Freedom and Independence for the Golden Landß of Australia." A second edition was published in -1857. and what was really a third edition was published in 1870 under the title, "The Coming Event." In that book Dr. Lang forecasts the queitions of Australian independence and the federation of the Australian colonies being decided by plebiscite.

During a -visit to England in 1843, Dr. Lang expressed strong sympathy *ith O'Connell's agitation for the repeal i-f Ihe Union between England and Ireland, aid when Garvar Duffy arrived at Sydney in 1855, he addressed him a public letter of welcome, but was subsequently disappointed when Duffy declined to cooperate with him in the agitation for the immediate independence of Australia. Dr. Lang excited strong opposition in hie day, but he always remained a popular figure, and when he died in 1878, he was accorded the honour of a public funeral, and subsequently his Btatue was erected in Wynyard square, Sydney, the cost being voted by Parliament. The ceremonies spoken of in the cable message evidently refor'tb the centenary of Dr. Bang's arrival in Australia.