But after a time the old besetting infirmity turned up here also, and in
a rather serious form, as connected with irregularities in Corporation
moneys and accounts, which might have been compromising to any other
than Kerr, with his well-known indifference to such vulgar good things.
He had a remarkable resemblance, in more than one point of character and
circumstances, to his brother Scotchman, and fast friend till death, the
Reverend Dr. Lang, of Sydney; and had he possessed the physical vigour,
not to say the stately proportions, of that most combatant of members of
the church militant, he might have been his Victorian rival in a far
more prosperous and protracted career. In each there was a very
combative mind behind the mildest of manner. Besides the pulpit, Lang
sought successfully also the Legislature, where, somehow, clergymen are
not favourites. He was, in fact, in the first instance, one of our
members for Port Phillip, and it was chiefly to his efforts and
abilities that separation from New South Wales was eventually conceded
from Home. In the elective contests we saw some of the peculiar talent
with which Lang fought his many political foes, when, with an inimitable
blandness of address, and the softest of mellifluous language, he would
build up a many-sided argument, patiently and leisurely, and at last, as
with the bitterly biting end of a stockman's long whip, flay the
Wentworths of opposition, who, with more noise than effect, were ever
snapping at his heels.
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