SQUATTERO-MASTIX 175 



character in England and Scotland, besides Bright and 

 the Quakers, Cobden and the Manchester School, con- 

 demned it at the time, as many a man condemned the 

 South African war, in the name of equity. 



Many of the incidents of his life throw a disagreeable 

 light on his character. He was thrice prosecuted and 

 twice imprisoned for criminal libels. In 1850 he was 

 prosecuted for libelling Mr. Icely, a well-known member 

 of the Legislative Council, for things done twenty-six 

 years before, and he was then fined £100 and imprisoned 

 for four months. In 1855, after his son had been con- 

 victed of embezzlement, he scurrilously libelled the 

 Chief -Justice of Victoria, who heard the case ; but Lang, 

 possibly in compassion for a sorely tried father, was 

 generously acquitted. The judicial leniency taught 

 him no lesson. Only four months later he was convicted 

 of libelling a functionary of the bank in which his son 

 had been an employee. He took it all, sunshine or hail, 

 with more than philosophic composure. He used the 

 enforced leisure of the prison in revising his historical 

 account of New South Wales, in reading the newspapers, 

 and in drinking coffee. He was evidently sustained in 

 all his trials by the consciousness of rectitude, but he 

 was supported yet more by an innate fortitude that was 

 in good part physical. 



Is it not a prodigy that a man who was so often in 

 trouble, who was dragged before the Courts on criminal 

 charges, who had made acquaintance with the inside 

 of a prison, who was expelled from his church, who was 

 deposed from his clerical office — that is, stripped of his 

 rank as a minister, who was publicly assailed in the 

 strongest terms of reproach by leaders in the State, such 

 as Went worth and Lowe, who had a succession of 

 Governors against him, who was in questionable ways 

 mixed up with financial imbroglios, and was accused 

 of something worse than sharp practice, who was 

 deserted by the creatures of his hands — men whom he 

 had brought out to Australia to serve as schoolmasters 

 and ministers — ^is it not a prodigy that such a man 



