Page:The Dictionary of Australasian Biography.djvu/30

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DICTIONARY OF AUSTRALASIAN BIOGRAPHY.
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darkened in England they appeared to be brightening at the antipodes. Having resigned his seat on the Board of the South Australian Company in 1848, he determined to take up his residence on his Australian property, and, fortunately, was able to dispose of his English concerns on advantageous terms. He sailed for Adelaide by the ship Ascendant on Oct. 3rd, 1850, with his wife and youngest son, William Henry, who died in 1879. He was cordially welcomed on his arrival as the virtual father and founder of South Australia, and seemed never able to divest himself of the idea that the colony was still in as much need as in the days of its initiation of his paternal care and control. There was thus a dictatorial tone in his speeches and addresses, which prevented his becoming a popular, though he was always a respected, publicist. Even in this direction he had his consolations, for the new constitution rendering the Legislative Council partially representative having gone out in the same ship as that by which he travelled, he was at once returned to the new body for Barossa, and, in his parliamentary capacity, had the privilege of assisting in giving the final death-stroke to the system of State aid to religion, to which he had all along been so strenuously opposed. In connection with the New Constitution Act an amusing story is told. It had been an ambition of Mr. Angas's to be the personal bearer of the official copy of the Act to the colony; but it was found to be contrary to precedent, and red-tape triumphed, the important document being sent from the Colonial Office in charge of a clerk, who gave the package to a steward, who, being very busy, thrust it into the nearest place of safety. On arrival in Adelaide the proper authorities came on board to demand their Constitution, and receive it with due honour. The captain, however, protested that he had seen nothing of it, and there was a great hue and cry for the lost Constitution, until one day shortly after, in turning out the captain's soiled linen for the laundress, it was found, to the great amusement of every one, at the bottom of the bag, the place in which the steward had hurriedly placed it for security. In 1855, when he was again re-elected, Mr. Angas assisted in framing the present Constitution Act, and thus participated in crowning the edifice of public freedom in the colony, whose foundations he had laid in fear and trembling, and amidst much of doubt and difficulty. In his worldly affairs his prosperity was great and growing; the property purchased by Mr. Flaxman turning out to have been admirably selected, and rendering its proprietor wealthy beyond any dreams of avarice in which he might have indulged. Mr. Angas was a liberal contributor to charitable and religious objects of a Protestant character. The Roman Catholic Church was the object of the strongest abhorrence, and it was doubtless a severe blow to him to witness its growth and progress under a régime of religious equality, which he had fondly believed would secure the undisputed predominance of Protestant Nonconformity. Even in his eighty-first year he flooded the colony with an issue of anti-papal literature, which certainly did not lack controversial vigour and pugnacity. Whatever may have been his faults of egotism and intolerance, they were the outcome of one of those strong and sturdy individualities which have made England what it is; and South Australia certainly owes it to Mr. Angas that she took her place in the ranks of civilised communities many years earlier than would otherwise have been the case. During the discussions on the present Constitution Act Mr. Angas, whilst opposing manhood suffrage and vote by ballot, was a staunch supporter of an elective as against a nominee Upper House, and this was the principle ultimately adopted. In 1857 he was elected a member of the new Council, and was absent for two years in England (Dec. 1857 to Sept. 1859) without resigning his seat. In 1865 he was re-elected on his seat becoming vacant by effuxion of time, but he retired from parliament in the following year, and died on Jan. 15th, 1879. Mrs. Angas died on Jan. 14th, 1867.

Angas, George French, F.L.S., eldest son of the late George Fife Angas (q.v.) and Rosetta [French], his wife, was born at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and devoted himself to artistic pursuits. In Sept. 1843 he left London on an art tour through Australia and New Zealand, returning

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