THE CONSTITUTION STATUTE OF 1842 289 



So decisive a rebuff would have discouraged most men, but it 

 only made Dr. Lang more determined to fight on. Since his 

 arrival in Sydney in 1823 he had been rarely free from controversy 

 with his fellow-citizens, with the Government, with the Press, with 

 the Judicature, even with the Presbytery, and he had called forth 

 a whole army of opponents, some of whom hated and some feared 

 him. But Lang was one of those exceptional men who never know 

 when they are beaten, or, at any rate, never acknowledge defeat. 

 When he was committed for libel, he whiled away the time with 

 excursions into the regions of literature and philosophy while his 

 congregation were collecting the amount of the fine which repre- 

 sented the price of his redemption. When his Church Courts 

 deposed him he refused to go ; and as there is no police machinery 

 for stripping recalcitrant priests of their right to preach if men will 

 hear them, he kept possession of the church property by simply 

 ejecting synodical intruders. And in this he fought a winning 

 fight, though it lasted over many years, for he succeeded in getting 

 his deposition annulled, and held on to his benefice as long as he 

 lived. Although doubts have been cast upon the veracity of many 

 of Lang's historical statements, it is probable that in most cases 

 they were coloured or distorted by the importance of his own con- 

 nection with them, which indeed he was apt to regard as their chief 

 claim to consideration. It would be difficult to find in the entire 

 range of English literature a tone of more unabashed egotism than 

 runs through all his voluminous writings. 



He was certainly not an immoral man, but, though a clergyman, 

 it may be said with equal certainty that he was not a religious man, 

 in the sense in which that qualification is generally understood. 

 Twenty years of preaching of a specially harsh form of Calvinism 

 had necessarily strengthened him in a low opinion of human 

 nature, and the inclination to fancy the generation which he 

 preached at more stiff-necked than another is not an uncommon 

 pulpit foible. How came it that this dogmatic pedant, with his 

 imperious ways and caustic tongue, should have renounced his 

 Government stipend to qualify himself for the Legislature, and have 

 made his dash into politics to champion the oppressed settlers of 

 Port Phillip ? Partly it was due to fortuitous circumstances, partly to 

 VOL. i. 19 



