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GRIFFITH LIVES on This Is a Great Honour

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GRIFFITH LIVES on This Is a Great Honour 43 THIRD CLEM LACK MEMORIAL ORATION delivered to the Royal Historical Society of Queensland by Sir Theodor Bray, Chakman of Griffith University Council, at Newstead House, 20 March 1975. GRIFFITH LIVES ON This is a great honour. I deeply appreciate the tribute you pay me in asking me to deliver the Clem Lack Oration for 1975. This is not an oration: it is a talk on the subject "Griffith Lives On", and is devoted to the life and work of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, Queenslander, Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, a truly great Australian. 1 am doubly pleased to give this talk—first as a tribute to Clem Lack, with whom I was happy to work when I first came to Brisbane in 1936 as chief sub-editor of T/ie Courier-Mad. Then Clem Lack was writing his pungent political columns, writing from the press gallery of the Queensland Parliament with wit and erudition, in a style all his own. In this capacity he was following the subject of my talk, Sam Griffith, who broke into Queensland politics by the attention given to a series of articles he wrote about the Queensland Parliament, anonymously, when he was on vacation from studies at the Sydney University. Who am I talking about? The Right Honourable Sir Samuel Walker Griflhth, G.C.M.G., P.C, D.C.L., M.A. A man of quite extraordinary vision. He came to power as Premier for the first time in November, 1883. This was the session famous for ks Ten MiUion Loan. Ten million pounds! Think of the exckement that loan must have caused in a colony of 220,000 people. Never before had Queensland borrowed on so vast a scale, and probably never since considering what inflation has done to the value of money. Ten mUlion pounds, mostly for railways to give, in the picturesque political phrase of the day, "every citizen a railway siding at his back gate". It is obvious that the member of Parliament who used that phrase thought mainly of squatters and settlers. This programme, however, did give Queensland an extraordinary system of transport. The Colony opened 1,044 miles of track between Since this paper was read Sir Theador Bray, who has had a distinguished career in Australian journalism, has been elected first Chancellor of Griffith University. 44 1883 and 1888. It must be explained that this loan programme did include 750,000 pounds for migration and 100,000 pounds for defence of the colony. 1 have chosen the title, "Griffith Lives On", as so much of what Griffith did was so fundamental to the life of Queensland and AustraUa that the effects of his thoughts and actions, as a member of Parliament, a Minister of the Crown, and a judge in the highest courts in Queensland and Australia are stUl affecting our lives today one hundred years after he took action. I hope to direct your attention to some of the highlights of this remarkable man's career, and point up the consequences to us, and the inspiration he is still giving to new generations of Queenslanders. Griffith was a leader in so many spheres that it is difficult to single out some for special mention. To make an arbkrary choice, I will refer at this early stage to his astonishing achievements as a reformer in education and in law. One hundred years ago, in 1875, Griffith piloted through the Queensland Parliament an act providing for education in this State to be free, secular, and compulsory. We celebrate his foresight this year with the opening of a new type of University in Brisbane taking his name. Later I shaU explain some of the innovations in this university of which I am sure Sir Samuel, the radical, would approve. Through the last decade of the last century Sir Samuel was the great architect of the Federal constitution, setting up a Federal system of government for Australia that now is coming to a severe testing time. There are many State political leaders today who would wish that Griffith were still on the High Court to Usten sympathetically to arguments in favour of State rights. But let me go back to the Griffith beginning and give you the bare bones of a great man's life before I elaborate on points of special importance to my theme. Samuel Walker Griffith was born at Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales, on 21 June 1845, the son of Edward Griffith, a Minister of the Congregational Church, who migrated to Australia under the Colonial Missionary Society in 1854, settled at Ipswich, then at West Maitland, and from 1860 in Brisbane. MATRICULATED AT 15 Young Sam was educated at a private school in Sydney and at Maitland School. He matriculated to Sydney University at the age of 15. Winning prizes and scholarships, he completed his Bachelor of Arts course when 18, with first-class honours in classics, mathematics, and natural science. 45 Young Griffith took to law, being articled in Brisbane to Arthur Macalister. He was called to the Queensland Bar in 1867, after spending time abroad on a T. S. Mort travelling fellowship. Lawyers, then as now, seemed to gravkate to politics. In 1872, when 26 years of age, he entered the Queensland Legislative Assembly as representative for East Moreton. In less than three years he was Attorney-General. In the next 21 years he enjoyed a political career without parallel in Queensland, as Attorney-General, Minister for Public Instruction, Leader of the Opposition, and Premier and Colonial Secretary. In March, 1893, he retired from politics to become Chief Justice of Queensland. Before then he had become an ardent advocate of Federation. Literally he was the father ot Federation, being the author of documents which formed the basis of the constitution eventually adopted for Australia. More of this later. When the Federal Parliament decided in 1903 to constitute the High Court of Australia, Griffith was the obvious choice for the appointment of first Chief Justice of Australia. He presided over this court with great distinction for 16 years until ill-health forced him to retire in 1919. He retired to his home in New Farm, Brisbane, where he lived until his death on 9 August 1920. He was buried at Toowong. In 1870 Griffith had married JuUa Janet, daughter of James Thomson, of East Maitland. They had two sons and four daughters. Unhappily under family vicissitudes the name has fallen from pubUc life, and only one Griffith was able to attend the recent opening of Griffith University. There were present four ladies, descendants of Griffith. Griffith was created K.C.M.G. in 1886, when he was stUl active in Queensland politics; he was made G.C.M.G. in 1895, when Chief Justice of Queensland, and a member of the Privy Council in 1901, after he had been to England in 1900 as Queensland delegate to see the Commonwealth Bill through the British Parliament; and unofficially, to effect the inclusion of an amendment allowing appeals from the Federal High Court to the Privy CouncU. Griffith lives on here in current moves to abolish such appeals. There is the life of a great man, in brief. Is there a career in Austrahan history to equal it? I doubt it. Now let me put some flesh and bloo(l and nerve and spirit on to the bare bones. To save a multitude of footnotes, I hereby acknowledge my debt to the few authorities who have written about Griffith. I am quoting from the Australian Encyclopaedia, from R. K. Forward's booklet Samuel Griffith in the series on Great 46 Australians, from the John Murtagh Macrossan Lecture for 1938 on the Life of Sir Samuel Walker Griffith by A. Douglas Graham, barrister, from C A. Bernays, Clerk of Parliament, Queensland Politics During Sixty Years 1859-1910, from Triumph in the Tropics, the Queensland Centenary Year Book by Sir Raphael Cilento and Clem Lack, and the files of the Queensland Parhamentary Library. As a boy, young Sam was surrounded by books. On his fourth birthday his father gave him a Greek New Testament, and by the age of seven he had read every book in his reverend father's library. Sam had time for other boyish pursuks, and when the family settled at Ipswich, then a day's journey by river from Brisbane, Sam ran a fowlyard, bred rabbits for sale, and shared a goat. In early youth Sam showed the qualities of advocacy that later made him famous. His nickname at the Maitland school was "Oily Sam", derived from his fluency of speech and his abUity to argue any side of a question. He was so smart that at 15 in the year 1859, the year when Queensland separated from New South Wales, he was sent off to Sydney University. In the following year his father began his ministry at the Wharf Street Congregational Church in the new capital of Queensland, Brisbane. On vacation in Brisbane Sam used to haunt the new Legislative Assembly and at least ten years before he entered Parliament Sam displayed remarkable knowledge of the rules of debate and the personalities and foibles of members of Parliament. His travel scholarship from Sydney University took him to Europe, and the Unke(d Kingdom. He used his time wisely in visiting the famous gaUeries and museums. At the age of 22, matured from travel, he took his final bar exams and was admitted to practice in Brisbane. Immediately he threw himself into the professional and commercial life of the new colony. They were exciting times, and he held poskions as a company director, in Freemasonry (he had been attracted by Anglo-Catholicism) and held positions on the Brisbane School of Arts and the Ipswich and Brisbane Grammar Schools.
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