Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/409

 GOVERNOR KING'S CAREER, 381 his Sovereign the sanction of crimes which that servant employed his life in correcting. To obtain no credit for good work done is a common lot. To bear blame for creating evils which a man has found rampant and has vigorously repressed is a rarer misfortune. More than a quarter of a century elapsed after King's death before Dr. Lang compounded his grotesque chapter upon the government of New South Wales during the eventful six years of King's government. The motive for Lang's mis-statements, so early committed and persistently repeated, it might be difl&cult to assign. Major Goulbum was the ever-recurrmg butt of his ridicule because he placed obstacles in Lang's way, when by misrepresentation of amounts of private subscriptions it was attempted to extort undue grants from the Treasury. The wife of Mr. Commis- sary Wemyss, in whose house Lang was received as a guest, did not escape vituperation when her husband failed to support Lang's plans with satisfactory earnestness. But these persons were yet alive, and might be supposed to feel the lash of their offended critic; whereas Governor King had long passed to a realm where such criticism, if it have effect, can on^y injure its pronouncer. In King's case it would be difficult to assign a motive unless it be that Admiral P. P. King, the son of the old Governor, in after years displeased Dr. Lang by failing to support him in some scheme, and it was desirable to mete out a wider vengeance than that of the Decalogue, and to visit the sins of the children upon their forefathers.^®* '®* If it should be thought that Lang's statements are unduly censured in the text, the foUowing paragraph will show how necessary it is to prove their worthlessness. From the time of Phillip to that of Governor Gipps there was no such effort made as that by Gipps to enforce justice to the aboriginal race. Nevertheless, when Sir G. Gipps failed, in Dr. Lane's opinion, to procure evidence of the truth of a rumour which reached him, Dr. Lang denounced Sir G. Gipps as a participator in crime and as having this "black blood upon his hands;" and now that Her Majesty has relieved him "of the task of misgoverning the most important of the Australian colonies, he may wipe it off if he can." — "Cooksland," by J. D. Lang. London: 1847. Gipps died before the invitation was published. Lang added in a note: "Sir G. Gipps was alive when this was written. He has since gone to his account. I see no reason, however, why I should expimge a syllable of what I had written in the case." But the charge against Gipps was unjust ; and, even if it had been true, how could he return from the dead to essay the vain task of Dr. Lang's sleep- walking countrywoman, Lady Macbeth?