27 May: Boreham on Henry Parkes

The Father of Federation
One fact dominated the career of Sir Henry Parkes, the anniversary of whose death we mark today. The person who ignores that vital fact will find it impossible to appreciate justly the character, or to assess accurately the influence, of the Father of our Australian Federation. That fact is that Henry Parkes enjoyed little or nothing in the way of education. He was sent to work in the fields when he was eight. To have achieved first class statesmanship in defiance of so cruel a handicap augurs the possession of intellectual qualities of the finest texture.

And, as a matter of fact, those outstanding powers early betrayed themselves. When devouring his modest dinner of bread and cheese under the shadow of a haystack in that West of England countryside, the farm boy would make some penetrating observation concerning public affairs. His companions would exchange knowing glances, and, as soon as the boy was out of hearing, would remark that young Harry Parkes had a head on his shoulders. He certainly had. But it lacked training.

To the end of his days he never quite forgave the forces that involved him in this inexorable deprivation. One of the most moving passages in the autobiographical writings of any public man is the record of the emotions with which, in his old age, Sir Henry Parkes read the "Life of Gladstone," instituting a comparison between that illustrious statesman's career and his own.

Whilst Gladstone was at Eton, enjoying all the advantages of a first-class education, preparing himself for Oxford with plenty of money and the most efficient training, Parkes was working on a rope walk for fourpence a day, and was treated with such brutality that he was often knocked down with a crowbar, remaining for half an hour unconscious. And, when Gladstone was at Oxford, Parkes was breaking stones on the highway with scarcely enough clothing to protect him from the cold.

Inspiration Of A New Environment
Such searing memories excite varied emotions. The Pessimist, looking first backward and then forward, says that what was good enough for him is good enough for his children. The Optimist vow that the young people under his charge shall never taste such bitterness as he himself has known. To his everlasting honour, Henry Parkes took the latter view. All through his life he argued that children should be given the finest education available at the lowest possible cost to themselves. The iron that entered his own soul as a youth, left a wound that never really healed.

At the height of his renown, his most impassioned flights of oratory were occasionally marked by misplaced aspirates, split infinitives, and unorthodox pronunciations. But nobody smiled. For everybody knew something of the tragedy and the pathos of his own brave struggle against overwhelming odds.

He was 24 when he reached the conviction that his prospects as an agricultural labourer, with neither wealth, education, nor social status, were not bright. England had nothing to offer him. What about Australia? He broached the daring project to his young wife. She agreed, and on July 25, 1839, they landed in Sydney. Sir Henry's first days in Australia were just about as wretched as his last days in England, and the only parenthesis in this monotony of misery was represented by a superlatively uncomfortable voyage on the emigrant ship that brought him from the hardships of the old world to the hardships of the new.

There were few auguries in those dismal days of the auspicious career that was to follow. During the rough and tumble of his early experiences in New South Wales, nothing so impressed him as the provincialism and parochialism of the various colonies, and it was while he was earning his living by manual labour that he conceived the ideal of a vast united and federated Commonwealth. He resolved, then and there, to devote his life to the realisation of that stately dream.

Dynamic Of A Lofty Ideal
The story of his public life is well known. There is no other instance in Australian history of a man bending his entire energies to one supreme end as whole-heartedly and unreservedly as did he. To the luminous and dominating idea that had so completely captivated his fancy, he consecrated the whole of his intellectual, oratorical, and literary equipment.

Critics with a supercilious air, pooh-poohed the scheme as Utopian, chimerical, impracticable, but he preached his doctrine, in season and out of season, with such tireless persistence and such audacious tenacity that he at length forced it into that fierce glare of public discussion which would allow of its being no longer regarded as the crotchet of a visionary. It then became the guiding star of his maturer statesmanship; and, directly or indirectly, everything else that he advocated was with the sole object of bringing him a little nearer to his ultimate goal.

Men of the calibre of Thomas Carlyle wrote to encourage him. He was quick to see that, isolated as the States were, one crimson thread, as he called it, bound them together. This consisted of their common loyalty to the Throne. He convinced himself that this mutual devotion represented a firm basis for his plea. He worked on through the years, sometimes applauded and sometimes derided, until in 1890, the famous Convention was held to give fulfilment to his dream.

During the last days, his old ears knew no sweeter music than to hear himself described as the Father of Australian Federation. He will always be remembered as a man who, beginning his life in extreme poverty and tending his life in extreme poverty, cherished through all the vicissitudes of his strange experience a lofty national ideal; making himself great by the dauntless persistence with which he pursued it.

F W Boreham

Image: Henry Parkes, appearing on Australia's five dollar note.