Content area
Full text
ABSTRACT
John Dunmore Lang, the Scottish Presbyterian clergyman who settled in Sydney in 1823, until his death in 1878 played an important role in the religious, political and cultural life of New South Wales and helped to create two new colonies: Victoria and Queensland. His writings as much as his political and educational activities significantly contributed to the rise of early Australian nationalism. Lang envisaged a great future of a federal Australian republic - the United Provinces of Australia. Drawing on Langs books, pamphlets and his articles and speeches published in the colonial and metropolitan press, this paper analyses the religious, ideological, political and economic ideas that led him to present and espouse the cause of the future America of the Southern Hemisphere. The focus is on the fundamental political and social principles on which Lang wanted to establish the independent Australian nation. The paper also discusses planned political institutions, as well as expected or desired social and economic characteristics.
Key words: John Dunmore Lang, Australian nationalism, colonial politics in NSW
Australia! land of hope!
Thy sons shall bear thee up
Even to the skies!
And Earth's exalted ones
Shall hail thee from their thrones,
Queen of the Southern Zones.
Australia, rise!
J.D. Lang, Australian Anthem, 18261
In 1851 the short-lived Sydney newspaper The Press published two parts of an imaginary report allegedly written by a certain Jabaz Porterfield in 1871 and printed in the Bengal Harkaru in Calcutta. On his voyage to Australia, Porterfield visited Flinderston, a seaport of the Gulf of Carpentaria, which he described as full of vessels loading for London and Liverpool. The cargo included wool, and a great quantity of cotton, sugar, coffee and tobacco. Wool was an important export article, but no longer the principal one, as it was superseded by increased exports of cotton. Porterfield's next visit was to Mitchellton, at the mouth of the Albert River in the Gulf of Carpentaria, opposite Sweers Island. Porterfield described Mitchellton as rapidly increasing and promising to be one of the largest and most important commercial cities in Australia. Of its 30,000 inhabitants about a third consist of natives of the Eastern Archipelago, thousands of whom are now flocking to all the northern cities of Australia in the quest for...