Samuel Griffith
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| Sir Samuel Griffith GCMG | |
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| In office 13 November 1883 – 13 June 1888 |
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| Appointed by | Alfred Deakin |
| Preceded by | Sir Thomas McIlwraith |
| Succeeded by | Sir Thomas McIlwraith |
| In office 12 August 1890 – 27 March 1893 |
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| Preceded by | Boyd Morehead |
| Succeeded by | Sir Thomas McIlwraith |
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| In office October 5, 1903 – 17 October 1919 |
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| Succeeded by | Sir Adrian Knox |
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| Born | 21 June 1845 Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, UK |
| Died | 9 August 1920 (aged 75) Brisbane, Queensland, Australia |
| Spouse | Julia Janet Thomson |
Sir Samuel Walter Griffith, GCMG, (21 June 1845 – 9 August 1920) was an Australian politician, Premier of Queensland, Chief Justice and the principal author of the Constitution of Australia.
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[edit] Early life
Griffith was born in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, the younger son of the Rev. Edward Griffith, a Congregational minister and his wife, Mary, second daughter of Peter Walker. Though of Welsh extraction, his forbears for at least three generations were natives of England. The family migrated to Queensland when Samuel was eight. He was educated at schools in Ipswich, Sydney, Maitland and Brisbane (from 1860), towns where his father was a minister, then at the University of Sydney, where he graduated B.A. in 1863 with first-class honours in classics, mathematics and natural science. During his course he was awarded the Cooper and Barker scholarships and other prizes. On his return to Brisbane he studied law and was articled to Arthur Macalister, in one of whose ministries Griffith afterwards had his first portfolio. In 1865 he gained the T. S. Mort Travelling Fellowship. Going to Europe he spent some of his time in Italy, and became much attached to the Italian people and their literature. Many years after he was to become the first Australian translator of Dante (The Inferno of Dante Alighieri in 1908). He then studied law in Brisbane, where he was called to the bar in 1867, and in 1870 he returned to Sydney to complete an M.A.. In the same year he married Julia Janet Thomson.
[edit] Political career
In 1872 Griffith was elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly.[1] Throughout his career he saw himself as a lawyer first and a politician second, and continued to appear at the Bar even when he was in office. In Parliament he gained a reputation as a liberal reformer. He was Attorney-General, Minister for Education and Minister for Works, and became leader of the liberal party in 1879. His great enemy was the conservative leader Sir Thomas McIlwraith, whom he accused (correctly) of corruption.
Griffith became Premier in November 1883 displacing McIlwraith. Griffith won the next election largely on his policy of preventing the importation of Kanaka labour from the islands. He passed an act for this purpose[1], but it was found that the danger of the destruction of the sugar industry was so great that the measure was never made operative. Recruiting was, however, placed under regulations and some of the worst abuses were swept away. Griffith took a special interest in British New Guinea, and was eventually responsible for the sending of Sir William MacGregor there in 1888.
He held the Premier's office until 1888, and was made KCMG in 1886, GCMG in 1895. He was regarded as a close ally of the labour movement. He introduced a bill to legalise trade unions, and declared that "the great problem of this age is not how to accumulate wealth but how to secure its more equitable distribution." In 1888 his government was defeated. In opposition he wrote radical articles for The Boomerang, William Lane's socialist newspaper.
But in 1890 Griffith suddenly betrayed his radical friends and became Premier again at the head of an unlikely alliance with McIlwraith, the so-called "Griffilwraith." The following year his government used the military to break the great shearers' strike, and he earned the nickname "Oily Sam." Griffith had had a distinguished career in Queensland politics. Included in the legislation for which he was responsible were an offenders' probation act, and an act which codified the law relating to the duties and powers of justices of the peace. He also succeeded in passing an eight hours bill through the assembly which was, however, thrown out by the Queensland Legislative Council.
[edit] Support for federation
Griffith was always a supporter of the Federation of Australia. At the intercolonial conference held at Sydney in November 1883 James Service, the Victorian premier, thought that Australia was ready for a real federal government, but Griffith, who was not prepared to go so far, moved and carried a resolution providing that a federal council should be formed to deal with the defence of Australasia, matters relating to the islands and Australia, quarantine, the prevention of the influx of criminals, and other matters of common interest to the various colonies.
In 1887 Griffith was one of the Queensland representatives at the colonial conference held in London, where he initiated the debate on the question of preferential trade and proved himself to be one of the outstanding men at the conference. He headed the Queensland delegation to the 1891 Sydney Constitutional Convention (where he was appointed vice-president), and his fine legal mind brought him a leading role in its deliberations. "It fell to my lot to draw the Constitution," he wrote, "after presiding for several days on a Committee, and endeavouring to ascertain the general consensus of opinion."
This first draft enshrined the basic principles of what eventually emerged as Australia's constitution: a federal system with specified powers ceded by the colonies to a national government, a bicameral legislature with an upper house in which all the colonies would have equal representation, and a federal judiciary.
[edit] Chief Justice
On 13 March 1893 Griffith promoted himself from Premier to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland where he served until 4 October 1903. He was therefore not a delegate to the 1897 conventions which produced the final draft of the Constitution, but he acted as a behind-the-scenes advisor to Sir Robert Garran, secretary of the Drafting Committee, which followed the structure he had laid out in 1891. In 1899 he campaigned publicly for a 'yes' vote in the federation referendum in Queensland.
During his term as Chief Justice he drafted Queensland's Criminal Code, the first successful codification anywhere of the entire English criminal law, which was adopted in 1899, and later in Western Australia, Papua New Guinea, substantially in Tasmania, and other imperial territories including Nigeria.[2] At May 2006 the Queensland Criminal Code remains largely unchanged.
When the federal Parliament passed the Judiciary Act in 1903 which created the High Court of Australia, Griffith was the natural choice as the first Chief Justice; the position for which he was indeed appointed. During his sixteen years on the bench Griffith sat on some 950 reported cases. In 1913 he visited England and sat on the Privy Council. After 1910 his health declined, and in 1917 he suffered a stroke. He retired from the Court in 1919 and died at his home in Brisbane on 9 August 1920. He is commemorated by the naming of Griffith University, with campuses throughout Queensland's South-East, the suburb of Griffith in Canberra, and the federal electoral division of Griffith. The Samuel Griffith Society is a conservative organisation dedicated to defending what it sees as the principles of the Constitution - particularly, the principle of states' rights. His portrait, by Richard Godfrey Rivers, hangs in the Brisbane Supreme Court.
[edit] Further reading
- Roger B Joyce, Samuel Walker Griffith, University of Queensland Press, 1984
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ a b Roberts, Beryl (1991). Stories of the Southside. Archerfield, Queensland: Aussie Books, 6. ISBN 094733601X.
- ^ Bruce McPherson, Supreme Court of Queensland, Butterworths, 1984
- Serle, Percival (1949). "Griffith, Samuel Walker". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
- R. B. Joyce, 'Griffith, Sir Samuel Walker (1845 - 1920)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 9, MUP, 1983, pp 112-119.
- This article incorporates text from the public domain 1949 edition of Dictionary of Australian Biography from Project Gutenberg of Australia, which is in the public domain in Australia and the United States of America.
[edit] External links
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Sir Thomas McIlwraith |
Premier of Queensland 1883 – 1888 |
Succeeded by Sir Thomas McIlwraith |
| Preceded by Boyd Morehead |
Premier of Queensland 1890 – 1893 |
Succeeded by Sir Thomas McIlwraith |
| Legal offices | ||
| Preceded by none |
Chief Justice of Australia 1903 – 1919 |
Succeeded by Sir Adrian Knox |
| Preceded by Charles Lilley |
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland 1893 - 1903 |
Succeeded by Pope Alexander Cooper |
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| Justices of the High Court of Australia |  |
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| Chief Justices of Australia | |
| Griffith · Knox · Isaacs · Gavan Duffy · Latham · Dixon · Barwick · Gibbs · Mason · Brennan · Gleeson | |
| Puisne Justices | |
| Barton · O'Connor · Higgins · Powers · Piddington · Rich · Starke · Evatt · McTiernan · Williams · Webb · Fullagar · Kitto · Taylor · Menzies · Windeyer · Owen · Walsh · Stephen · Jacobs · Murphy · Aickin · Wilson · Deane · Dawson · Toohey · Gaudron · McHugh · Gummow · Kirby · Hayne · Callinan · Heydon · Crennan · Kiefel | |
| current Justices are in italics | |
