816 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 



would suit the temperate reigions of Port Phillip would never 

 be in all respects wholesome for the semi-tropical regions of 

 Queensland ; he ardently espoused the cause of those who 

 wished to see Port Phillip separated from New South Wales, 

 and was, to a very large extent, instrumental in bringing 

 about the result. Again, he took up the cause of Moreton 

 Bay, and gave it substantial assistance in securing its separa- 

 tion, under the name of Queensland. 



Of the twelve books which Dr. Lang published, there are 

 three which are occupied with these topics, while a fourth 

 deals with the question of what he calls " Freedom and 

 Independence for Australia." His restless brain was ever busy 

 with some new idea, and he was the first to promulgate the 

 doctrine that these colonies must at an early date cast them- 

 selves adrift from the British Empire. He used very largely 

 what I beheve to be the false analogy of the colonies of 

 North America — false because the treatment which the 

 Australian settlements have uniformly received has been so 

 different from that which drove the Americans into righteous 

 rebellion. This book is pedantic and arrogant, and it has 

 few excellences to set against the general unpleasantness of 

 its tone. 



A fifth book is devoted to Emigration, and a sixth to 

 "Transportation and Colonisation," both useful books in their 

 way, but not marked by any great literary merit. A book 

 of Dr. Lang's, on New Zealand, published in 1839, had 

 some little influence upon the fortunes of the colony that was 

 founded there in the following year. A work of earlier date, 

 on the " Origin and Migrations of the Polynesian Races," 

 broached some theories which held their place for a while, 

 but are now, T believe, mostly forgotten. 



But the book by which he will be best known is his History 

 of New South Wales, a work in two volumes, which has run 

 through many editions. It is a book of that class in which 

 one finds much to interest him, but little to admire. It is 

 verbose, it is egoistic, it is digressive, and it has none of that 

 sense of the proportionate value of events which is so essential 

 a feature in a good historian. But it justifies itself by being 

 the most readable account of the first half century of Aus- 

 trahan history ; for neither Braim's pragmatic volumes, nor the 

 collection of ill-digested facts made by Flannagan, can be 

 called in any way readable, though they have a value of 

 their own as quarrying ground for subsequent writers. It 

 would be impossible to quote from Lang's history any 



