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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.

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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.

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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.

In March 1872 he was invked to enter politics for the Liberal Party to "oppose the class domination of the squatters and to work for the good of the people as a whole". Squatters were preventing migrants and townspeople getting land for small farms.

4f

Griffith: Zealous reformer. A picture taken in 1874. Oxley Library Collection.

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POLITICAL REFORMER He won his first election campaign and proved to be an

impulsive new member, speaking 40 times during his fkst month in Parliament. From the outset he was a reformer, and in his first session presented and had passed a Private Members' Bill to allow the use of telegrams for legal and commercial purposes. In his first year he began campaigning on the need for making State primary education free, compulsory and purely secular.

In this realm, Griffith really lives on. After only two years in Parliament, Griffith became Attorney-General and really set about reforms in land laws and in education. Next year, he had passed his Act for free primary education, to be secular, and to be compulsory between the ages of six and 12. The compulsory provision lapsed because of the difficulty of policing it, and did not operate untU 1900. Griffith became Queensland's first Minister for Public Instruction.

Griffith Lives On in a number of reforms made to the laws of the State. Many of these made radical social changes, but are now seen to be of immense benefit to the people, and have become part of our social philosophy.

Bernays goes so far as to assert that 1883, when Griffith first came to power as Premier, leading a Liberal-Democratic Party, was democracy's starting barrier. There would, however, be many students of politics loth to admit that Griffith could claim to be a Democrat. Whatever he was, he was a strict interpreter and upholder of the law.

I list some of the stream of reforms that flowed from his magnificent mind—

1878—Local Government Act. This laid the foundation of all efforts to perfect a system of local govemment that would commend itself to popular approval.

1884—Elections Act Amendment Act, cleaning up elections by imposing residential qualifications and stopping train-loads of electors arriving at key points to vote.

1885—first bill to provide daily expenses for Members of Parliament, the beginning of payment of members, and look where it has led.

He followed this up with legislation for the payment ol salaries to members in 1889. The first pay was £300 a year. But hard times came on the State and just before retiring from ParUament in 1892 to become Chief Justice at £3,500 a year, a financial sacrifice on his earnings at the bar, Griffith amended the Payment of Members Act, cutting salaries to £150 a year. This is the only record I can find of Members of ParUament legislating to reduce their own pay.

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Griffith's original reforming zeal on the ownership and use of land is best exemplified in the 1884 Lands Act. This took control of the boundaries, renting and sale of public lands out of the hands of politicians and gave it to a Lands Board. It replaced freehold with leasehold tenure. Griffith aimed to replace large absentee squatters with many small, leasehold farmer-graziers. These would be obliged to live on their properties and improve them.

1835—Undue Subdivision of Land Act. This fixed the minimum width of streets and lanes and ensured that no land was cut up into alloments less than 16 perches.

1886—An Act to set up an Elections Tribunal. 1892—Pastoral Leases Amendment Act, one of a succession

of acts controlling land use. This one was concerned about the incursion of rabbits, and provided for longer leases for pastoralists if they built permanent fences to prevent the passage of rabbits.

1892^—another Elections Act to purify the electoral rolls. 1890—a Goldfields Act to further block the influx of Asiatic

and African aliens to the goldfields. This could truly be seen as one of the basic building blocks of the White Australia Policy, taken up so enthusiastically in other States after Federation.

1878—Griffith's Orphanages Act, the first legislative attempt to care for parentless and neglected children.

1886—The Offenders' Probation Act, described by Bernays as one of the most advanced and humanitarian laws on the Statute book, "giving young backsliders an opportunity to recover."

1886—Employers' Liability Act, bringing to Queensland English workers' compensation.

1886—Trades Unions Act, which allowed Trades Unions to register as friendly societies and therefore become legal, as under the EngUsh law.

1889—Griffith moved for an Eight Hour Day. This was blocked in the Legislative Council. Griffith's motive is worth recording. He wanted hours of work to be restricted to eight between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. "so workmen might have a reasonable tkne at their disposal for recreation, mental culture, and the performance of social and civic duties." In this respect Griffith was more an idealist than a pragmatist. The worker has now less than an eight hour day, but few spend their leisure as envisaged.

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STATUS FOR TRADES UNIONS Griffith's Liberal Party claimed to be the Working Man's

Friends. In this advanced thinking Griffith was foUowkig his entry to politics on the side of the small farmers and Brisbane traders against the squatters.

In 1885 Griffith gave legal status to trade unions. He was following, as so often, reforms in Great Britain. He also made employers liable, to some extent, for certain injuries sustamed by workers. This was the forerunner of the comprehensive workers' compensation avaUable today.

Griffith also tried, a second time, but failed, to have passed an Eight Hours Day Bill.

And to complete the record of his association with the embryo trade unions and their early poUtical aspirations, k must be reported that it was Griffith, by then Chief Justice and in his capacity as Lieutenant Governor of the Colony, who in 1899 sent for Anderson Dawson, one of the members for Charters Towers, and commissioned him to form the first Labor Government in Queensland and the first in Australia. The Dawson Government lasted six days.

But Griffith had gone through some rugged poUtical experiences in the economic chaos of the early nineties before he retired to the bench.

In 1890 and 1891 his govemment was confronted with the shearers' strike in which the Labor Party was born. This was an all-in struggle between shearers and pastoralists. The shearers demanded that only unionists be employed in the sheds. Strikes and lockouts led to armed confrontation between shearers and pastoralists. The Government, under Griffith and Mcllwraith, imported shiploads of armed strike-breakers from Victoria and provided soldiers and special police to escort them to shearing sheds in the Barcaldine and Clermont districts. Shearers, too, were armed. There were ugly incidents, but not bloodshed. Many strikers were arrested and imprisoned.

For this Griffith was praised and reviled. He defended his actions by declaring that he never favoured anything but gradual reform. To him the militant resistance by the shearers to the use of. non-union labour was a crime against good government and the good order of society.

The workers lost faith in him. He was accused of betraying the liberties of the people. He was burnt in effigy at Barcaldkie in March 1891 and in December of that year was hooted off the racecourse in TownsvUle.

Griffith, in power in coalition with Mcllwraith-, did, however, restore order in the colony.

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For praise look back to 1880 when a torch-light procession of 10,000 citizens cheered his carriage through the streets of Brisbane. This was on his return from London, where he had accused the Premier of the day, Mcllwraith, of defrauding the Colony of £60,000 in a steel rails deal.

Griflfith really did hold some very advanced and altruistic views. Some admirers have said he could possibly have been leader of a Labor Party, had he come to politics later, at the turn of the century. I think, however, he was too much of an intellectual idealist to make a mark in the rough and tumble of Labor polkics.

His idealism is exemplified in the erudite measure he introduced in 1890—the Elementary Property Law. In this he laid down first principles in regard to the Right of Life, and the right to take advantage of natural forces, and common property in land.

In introducing this measure, he declared: "All persons are by natural law equally entitled to the right of life and to the right of freedom for the exercise of their faculties and no person has by natural law any right superior to the right of any other person in this respect. Land is by natural law the common property of the community. The right to take advantage ot natural forces belongs equally to all members of the community."

This thinking was well ahead of his colleagues' and he did not proceed with the measure.

FIRST COLONIAL DEFENCE Griffith estabUshed the fkst defences of the Colony. In 1882,

as member for North Brisbane, he invited the House of Assembly to give immediate attention to the defences of the colony. In 1884 Griffith, as Premier, had the Defence Act passed. This set up Colonial defences with a permanent force of militia based on the Canadian miUtia system.

In 1885 the Naval Brigade was organised. The Government steamer Otter was fitted as an auxiliary, as were five hopper barges. The military organisation was expanded, with permanent and volunteer soldiers including mounted infantry, which later became famous as the Light Horse.

In moving the Defence Estimates in 1885 and 1886, Griffith, as Premier, warned ParUament and the people of Queensland of the Russian scare. "Threat of war was no idle one," he declared in one speech and added that it was weU-known that arrangements had been made by the Russians to attack the Australian coast, apparently seeking gold. Griffith must certainly have scared Queenslanders and, indeed, AustraUans

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living in such distant parts of Australia as Adelaide, for I well remember my parents discussing the Russian scare many years later in the first decade of this century.

Under Griffith's urging, Queensland commissioned the gun boat Gayundah and offered H.M.Q.S. Gayundah for service with the Royal Naval Squadron in Australian waters. Gayundah, I believe, became the first ship of the colonial navies to fly the White Ensign.

Griffith often spoke out on the need to annex the south east of New Guinea as a measure of self-defence for Queensland and he supported Mcllwraith when he actually did annex New Guinea, to the distress of the Imperial Government in April 1883. Annexation was disallowed by the Colonial Office, but Griffith and Mcllwraith had laid the foundation of feeUng that led to seizure of German New Guinea in 1914.

COLOURED LABOUR ISSUE Griffith lives on in thought and legislation on the use of

coloured labour in Australia According to Bernays, the Liberal Party led by Griffith had its origin, in part, in the opposition of a large section of the community to coloured labour. Griffith took a prominent part in the crusade against the coloured labour trade. Pacific Islanders had been recruited for the sugar industry but their use was being abused. In 1884, during a term Griffith was Premier, the Pacific Islanders Labourers' Act was amended.

Griffith aimed to protect the avocations of white workers. This may seem astonishing; but it must be realised that the weU-to-do were on the way to setting up a counterpart of the feudal system of the Southern States of America before the abolition of slavery and coloured workers were appearing, even in Brisbane, as coachmen and domestic servants. Under Griffith's amend­ments tropical or semi-tropical agriculture, which was avaUable to coloured labour, was defined as field work in sugar-cane, cotton, tea, rice and spices. Despite this limkation, coloured labour was still sought eagerly, and led to the horrors of "blackbirding". These shocked Griffith, and he finally took a firm stand against coloured labour.

In 1885 he had passed an Act aboUshing licence to introduce Islanders in five years time, that is in 1890.

Feeling, as can be imagined, ran high in the sugar districts which were thriving on cheap coloured labour. Toast of the day in the Mackay district was "D S G—Damn Sam Griffith". This Act was never implemented, and two years later in 1892 Griffith turned right round and went to Parliament to repeal the Act of 1885.

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Why? Bernays was puzzled and wrote: "One wonders what malign influences were brought to bear to make so great a man recant such great ideals after spending the best years of his political life in cleansing an Augean stable."

The simple explanation seems to be that Griffith was a pragmatic politician, concerned with what is possible, which is the essence of political action.

Griffith was told by the sugar industry that it could not carry on with only European labour, not acclimatised to Queensland tropics. He bowed to pressures, although he stated his conviction that sugar cane would eventually be cultivated in tropical Queensland entirely by whke labour. Griffith has, of course, been completely vindicated. But after Griffith's change of mind the Queensland Parliament avoided the issue.

The coloured labour issue was not settled until 1904 when the Commonwealth Government ended this labour trade and sent home the Pacific Island labourers, with some exceptions on the ground of continuous residence.

The issue, however, had not been a simple one. It had been complicated in the late 80's by proposals to introduce "reliable cooHe labour from India." Griffith fought this as he fought the separation of North Queensland as a separate colony, pointing to the danger of creating a "black state". He countered this with a proposal for three provinces, an idea which simmered in the public mind until Queensland was tied down in the Federal union in 1900.

There had also been restrictions on Chinese labour.

MOVE TO FEDERALISM Griffith lives on best in the Federal sphere. He can be truly

called the Father of Federation. No man played a bigger part than he did in promoting thought on setting up a Federal system of government and in actuaUy drafting a constitution for AustraUa.

Queensland, under Griffith, set an example in the endeavour to cultivate a spirit of unity among the separate colonies of Australia.

In July 1884 on the motion of Griffith as Premier, the Queensland ParUament passed a resolution asking Her Majesty (k was Queen Victoria) to constitute a Federal Council of Australasia on the basis of a draft bill adopted by the convention held in Sydney at the end of 1883.

Federation had been mooted in Victoria as early as 1857. Griffith dominated the first meeting of this Federal Council held in Hobart in 1886. He drafted the rules of debate and was chakman of the standing committee. At the second

54

meetmg of the Council in 1888 he was elected president and remained in that office untU 1893.

This council was handicapped by the fact that New South Wales and New Zealand never joined, and South AustraUa only for a short time. But the council did encourage the first deliberate step taken towards Federation in 1891 when a National Australasian Convention was held in Sydney. This convention was attended by the representatives of six Australian colonies and New Zealand. Sir Henry Parkes, the Premier of New South Wales, presided. The central figure, beyond all question, was the vice-president, Griffith. Here Griffith revealed his feeUngs on State rights. He proposed that any Federal system set up should include a strong Senate with power to veto any bill passed by the lower house. To Griffith this was needed to preserve the rights of the smaller (less populous) colonies.

Griffith was elected chairman of the committee on the constitutional powers and functions of the Commonwealth. He threw all his legal talent and skill into drafting a federal constitution for a Commonwealth of Australia made up of six Australian States.

Work was completed on the Queensland Government steam yacht in the Hawkesbury river, just north of Sydney. Premiers had their prestigious perquisites in those days and Griffith had gone to Sydney by special train.

Alas for his high hopes! New South Wales failed to approve the draft and Federation was not achieved until ten years later. By that time Griffith had left politics. In 1893, at the age of 47, he ended his political career, wearied by the colony's political and financial storms.

Forward remarks that Griffith's poUtical career was probably the most fruitful in all Australian history. I would be more definite. It was the most fruitful.

He contested four elections for three different electorates. He was just on 22 years in Parliament. He was Premier twice for a total of eight years and Leader of the Opposition twice for six years.

For three decades in the seventies, eighties and nineties two of the colony's outstanding men, Griffith and Mcllwraith, dominated the political scene. Griffith's political philosophy is summed up in two of his recorded statements.

"The essence of politics is compromise. Sometimes even a statesman must do that which is possible, even if k is not the best," and in answering his critics on changing his mind about the employment of islanders in the canefields—"the business of government is not a matter of theory, but of hard practical duty." J' F

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Griffith: Chief Justice and Knight. Oxley Library Collection.

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EMINENCE ON THE BENCH On the bench Griffith continued to astound everyone with

his vast legal knowledge. He was precise, meticulous, and impatient with anyone who dwelt on legal technicalities at the expense of obvious justice.

Soon after his appointment he set himself the task of compiling a Criminal Code for Queensland. As a young man he had greatly admired the Italian criminal code, which he studied closely from his first visit to Italy as a student. In forming the Queensland Code Griffith worked through 250 Acts of Parliament and the laws relating to more than 1,000 offences. The Queensland Code of 733 sections was officially adopted in 1899. Judges and lawyers assure me that k stands virtually unchanged today and by many authorkies is hailed as Griffith's greatest monument.

Let me now resume the Federal story. Griffith, though removed from politics on his appointment as Chief Justice of Queensland in 1893, remained a power on and off the scene. He was a dominating influence on later Federal conventions and wrote and spoke on how to make a Commonwealth work. When there was a deadlock on the subject of appeals to the Privy Council from the highest court in Australia, Griffith proposed a compromise which, in the words of Alfred Deakin, his great friend, provided "the golden bridge over which the delegates passed to union".

Griffith lives on in the current controversy over appeals to the Privy Council. There are two schools of thought. One maintains that he was a confirmed Federalist. Another claims that he held to State rights. Certainly he held strictly to the law. He and his earliest colleagues on the High Court, Sir Edmund Barton, who had been the first Prime Minister, and Mr. Justice O'Connor, tried to hold a "balance between the States and the Commonwealth with a mutual non-interference in each other's affairs." The Court, however, did not hold to this opinion after Mr. Justice Isaacs and Mr. Justice Higgins joined the bench in 1906.

Indeed the Court went through some torrid sessions. Looking back on them, Griffith's critics complain that he lost his social radicalism with advancing age and under the influence of comfortable living in high office. Critics complain also that away from active poUtics, Griffith lost touch with the growing strength of Commonwealth sentiment and with the new conception of the role of the national government in social and industrial matters.

Griffith, however, was a stern defender of law and order right to the end of his official life. During strikes in 1917 he

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wrote as Chief Justice to the Governor-General, suggesting that strikers should be outlawed and deprived of their right to vote or to be heard in any court of law.

To round off the Federal story, when Federation came on January 1, 1901, Griffith had been made a Privy Councillor in recognition of his services to Federation. At the official dinner held to commemorate the occasion Griffith proposed the toast "The Commonwealth". During that year Griffith prepared the Commonwealth Judiciary Bill setting up the High Court. In August 1903 the Governor-General and the Attorney-General invited Griffith, who had then been Chief Justice of Queensland for 10 years, to become the first Chief Justice of AustraUa. He served for 16 years in that high office with great learning and distinction.

In 1908 he became a member of the judicial committee of the Privy Council, the highest court in the Empire. He sat in this court in 1913. Other members of the court, no doubt intending to commend and not to patronise, remarked on (quote) "such learning from the Antipodes".

From 1915 he suffered a series of iUnesses and in 1919 he retked because of ill health.

LIVES ON IN EDUCATION The Griffith spkit lives on in Education where Griffith was

a great pioneer. In 1875 as Attorney-General he introduced, and had passed through the Queensland Parliament, the Education Act. Under it he became the first Queensland Minister of Public Instruction. The act was very liberal for its time. It provided for schooling to be free and secular and compulsory between the ages of six and 12.

Two years later Griffith began to advocate in Parliament the founding of a University of Queensland. He was ahead of the times, and the proposal was not officially adopted until 1900. Even then k took the State untU 1909 to bring the university into being. This university, as we all know, has now grown into the magnificent institution flourishing at St. Lucia with the largest student population in Australia, about 19,000.

It is distressing to record that the memory of Griffith is not commemorated in the universky. Happily, when the Government of the 1960's was forced by pressures at St. Lucia to consider planning a second university in Brisbane the name of Griflfith was remembered.

When an interkn council was appointed at the end of 1970 to plan a second university institution in Brisbane it was told it had a site, selected nearly ten years before when a college attached to St. Lucia was vaguely thought of, and a tentative name, Griffith.

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PLANNING A UNIVERSITY The Council seized on the ske, a fine area of 177 hectares

of bushland at Mt. Gravatt, now known as Nathan, and asked the Government to confirm the name of the new institution as Griffith, in honour of the great man, so neglected in Queensland history. Soon after planning began it was decided to open Griffith University in 1975, which turned out to be a happy coincidence with the centenary of the passing of the Grkfith Education Act 1875.

Consciously and unconsciously, the Liberal spirk of Griffith permeated the thinking of the Griffith council and committees. From the beginning it was decided to plan a new type of university, based on experiments tried in the United Kingdom, and in new universities in AustraUa, such as Flinders in Adelaide and Macquarie in Sydney. The essence of the planning has been to organise teaching and learning in schools rather than in departments. In this way students will be taught in coherent courses rather than in fragmented segments picked up in various departments. In this way Griffith aims at teaching and learning in small teams in schools with themes. The Queensland Government showed itself to be remarkably open-minded, and accepted the basic ideas put forward by the interim council, and created Griffith University by an Act of Parliament

Processional entry to the opening ot Griffith University, 5 March 1975.

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passed in August 1971. From that time Griffith planning proceeded with confidence in the knowledge that its new ideas in teaching and learning and its new ideas for a flat and flexible universky administration were acceptable and could be tried.

It is now Queensland history that four years after planning began Griffith University was officially opened for teaching on 5 March 1975 by the Governor of Queensland in the presence of the Premier, Mr. Bjelke-Petersen and the Prime Minister, Mr. Whitiam.

For the record Griffith opened with four schools—Australian Environmental Studies, Humanities, Modern Asian Studies, and Science. Two of these—Environmental Studies and Modern Asian Studies—are quite new to the Australian universky scene. Their themes are obvious and it is worth recording that Humanities is based on the theme of Men's Values and how they are communicated and that Science is based on the role of science in society and the relationship of society to science.

It is gratifying to report that the academic philosophy of Griflfith University attracted a first-class staff from all over the world and enrolled at its opening over 400 students from the top level of Queensland boys and girls completing secondary schooUng.

BROADER BASE OF STUDY Griflfith made another innovation in student enrolment that

I am sure Sam Griffith in his wisdom would have approved. That is the new class of mature student. Griffith believes that many boys and girls would benefit from an experience of life in the outside world for a year or two after normal schooling and has offered a quota of deferred places to such students. Griflfith also seeks, and is finding, older men and women for university experience, those who may not have the formal qualifications usually required, but who, in the opinion of Griffith staff, would benefit from university study.

This broadening of the base of university study, which will also cope with continuing education through life, will, the Griffith Council believe, be in line with our namesake's liberalism, and be of great benefit to the community Griffith University was set up to serve.

Griffith certainly would favour the language study being offered in the School of Humanities—Italian. He had been fascinated by Italian culture when he visked Italy first as a stucient. He mastered Italian to understand completely the Italian Criminal Code to assist him in drafting the Queensland Criminal Code. From his studies of ItaUan he was moved to

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another prodigious task—translation of Dante's Divine Comedy and Dante's Inferno. There are differing schools of thought about Griffith's translations—one says he captured the poetry of Dante's genius; another says that his translation is literally correct but reads more like a legal document than a genukie work of art. Whichever judgment is right, Griffith did what no other Australian had done before—translated Dante.

How was Griffith regarded as a judge?

In the early days of the High Court of AustraUa, Philip A. Jacobs, of the Victorian Bar, paid this tribute in a book, entitied Judges of Yesterday: "Sir Samuel Griffith has a masterful personality. No intelligent observer could fail to mark his great mental gifts and versatility. Strength of intellect and purpose, coupled with self-confidence begotten by famiUarity with the science of law, have given him an ascendancy in his court such as Lord Watson (one of the greatest modem judges) obtained over the House of Lords. Rarely does it happen that either of his colleagues dissents from Sir Samuel. (His colleagues then were Sir Edmund Barton and Mr. Justice O'Connor.)

"Perhaps, however, the instinct of the fighting politician has to some extent outlived his Parliamentary career; for once his own view has been formed, he hugs it closely, uninfluenced by the fact that other eminent reasoners differ from him."

Then comes a typical Southern State comment. Having praised the Chief Justice for many outstanding qualities, Mr. Jacobs makes this observation: "The rare altitude attained by this learned judge becomes the more astonishing when it is remembered that his legal training was received in one of the less populous States, where the possibUities for professional men are correspondingly fewer . . .

"Whether talent or industry predominates in the Chief Justice it would be difficult to decide. Like Lord Chancellor Truro he may be described as having talent enough to succeed without industry and industry enough to succeed without talent. Such assiduity, indeed, as he possesses is truly colossal. What is to be said of a judge who scrutinises the documents in a case before the sitting of the Court begins and who sometimes is found to have even investigated the reported authorities in point before counsel have commenced their arguments. Nor is there any resting when the day's work is done. Because his practice is to keep himself abreast of current decisions and statutes."

Griffith was, indeed, a model judge.

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At Opening of Griffith University, 5 March 1975: Sir Colin Hannah, Governor of Queensland; Sir Theodore Bray; Mr. E. G. Whitlam, Prime Minister of Australia;

and Sir Gordon Chalk, Deputy Premier of Queensland.

EASY, UNCONSTRAINED Jacobs winds up with some more human touches^ "In manner the Chief Justice is easy, unconstrained, and

free from the affectation which so often seeks to cover up defects. His utterance is quiet and rapid. He is said to have shone in politics as a skUful draftsman and a powerful, though perhaps not eloquent debater; while at the bar he was a searching cross-examiner. On the Bench, as a notable lawyer, and a man of cyclopaedic mind, he ably sustains the role in which he is caUed upon to vindicate the majesty and power of law and justice."

I conclude by referring back to Bernays, a shrewd observer of the Queensland arena in which Griffith shone best. Bernays wrote—

"Griflfith did inherit an infinite capacity for taking pains, and an application to the objectives he had laid out for himself which might weU excite the envy of any man.

"A serious-minded young man when he first entered the Legislative Assembly it was a short time indeed before he began to impress his strong personality on the Legislature; but in the process of doing so he excited undoubted envy and suspicion at the outset of his Parliamentary career on the part of men less well endowed and far less industrious.

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"But having got his foot on the poUtical ladder of fame by holdkig office as Attorney-General in 1874, k was only a step, and a short one at that, to leadership and ultimate, complete dominance as the unusually strong leader of a large party. For many years, from 1879 to 1892, when he left the Legislature to become Chief Justice of Queensland, he led the Liberal Party, and held it together as no other man of his time could have done. It was not by means of truckUng to his followers or because he was personaUy popular as a leader, but k was because of his innate strength of character, his indomkable industry, and his transparent mental superiority over those with whom he was associated.

"In addition to his great learning, his success was attributable partly to the strong faith he had in himself. He compeUed other men to think he could do things better than they could (and k was true in most cases) from the drafting of complicated amendments to the choosing of a new carpet for the Legislative Assembly Chamber. A strange trait in his character was that he never entirely pleased himself. One watched him recast an amendment five or six times, and he then left the impression that he could do it twice as well in the privacy of his own study.

"In all the long 21 years that he served in the Legislative Assembly there never appeared in the Legislature anyone approaching his type. One could not honestly say that Griffith was a popular politician. He could have been had he been less sincere, but his convictions were so unshakeable that he decUned to trim his sails (if we except one remarkable instance) with the object of acquiring an ephemeral popularity. He seemed to depend on the sternness of his resolves to compel respect and admiration, rather than to descend to the littie things of life for the purpose of gaining a reputation of a genial, hail-fellow-well-met politician. And yet, in spite of his outward aloofness and apparent coldness, there came a time in his career when he had to submit to a species of hero-worship. One can never forget the phenomenal industry of the man. He seemed to regulate his whole Ufe by the belief that

ANYTHING WAS POSSIBLE TO AN INDUSTRIOUS MAN.

"There is a side to Griffith's character which everybody does not know—a side which he successfully hid when in the lime­light of politics. Unlike some clever and busy men, he cultivated to an unusual intensity the domestic side of life and in his home was the ideal husband and father."

For such a great man there are few memorials. Three roads have been named after him in Brisbane and a Commonwealth electorate, now to disappear in an electoral redistribution, to

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the shame of the electoral commissioners. I trust there will be an outcry and agitation to retain this honoured name on the political map.

UntU recent years there has been no public memorial in Queensland or the rest of Australia.

Now there is Griffith University at Nathan, the second University in Brisbane, and opened in an innovative spirit of which Griffith in his prime would have approved.

Griffith does Uve on.