SQUATTERO-MASTIX 173 



sessed of the money, to be used for his personal ends. 

 It was employed, we may presume, to meet the costs 

 of shipping and settling his colonists. But it had an 

 ill look, and the Colonial Office took an unfavourable 

 view of the transaction. Then the wrath of the doughty 

 Doctor broke out unassuageable. He addressed a letter 

 to Earl Grey, then the Secretarj^ of State, which may 

 be compared -vnth the philippics of Junius against the 

 Bedfords and Graftons. As Lang wrote this letter on 

 the eve of his departure with one of his emigrant ships, 

 he put it out of the power of the Colonial Office to reply 

 while Lang was still in England. Lord Grey neverthe- 

 less did reply, and in scathing language. During the 

 three years Lang had been in England he had never 

 once called on Lord Grey ; he did not write to him ; 

 he wrote only when Lang's own acts placed it out of 

 Grey's power to reply. The Colonial Office had Avinked 

 at Ms irregularities for a time, and intervened only when 

 those irregularities amounted to open defiance. The 

 emigrants, moreover, were not of the class required in 

 the proposed new colony. They were to be imported 

 as cotton-planters, but they were inexperienced as such. 

 The truth is, Lang had ways of his own of doing things, 

 which jarred against official ways and methods. The 

 masterful man got on ill with other people who were as 

 masterful as himself. 



He returned to Sydney in 1850 and was at once elected 

 a member for Sydney in the Legislative Council. He was 

 re-elected in 1851, when he was at the top of the poll, 

 beating the great Wentworth, who was at the bottom. 

 After the Wentworthian constitution came into force 

 Lang still maintained his political position. The bulk 

 of the topics legislated upon had drifted outside of the 

 purview of a priest, but on certain special subjects he 

 showed unremitting energy. The agitation for the 

 disestabhshment of the churches, not the Church, he at 

 length brought to an issue twenty years after it had been 

 set on foot, and, though " vested rights " were respected 

 (the last Anglican recipients of State bounty died only 



