Biography - Alfred Deakin - Australian Dictionary of Biography. Alfred Deakin (1.
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August 1. 85. 6 at Collingwood, Melbourne, younger child of William Deakin of Towcester, Northamptonshire, England, and his wife Sarah, n. William and Sarah left England in December 1. Samuel Boddington, bound for Sydney. In March 1. 85. 0 they disembarked at Adelaide, where William's married sister lived and where their first child, Catherine Sarah, was born in July. William briefly pursued his former occupations of clerk and shopman before, late in 1.
Victoria. The family soon followed; by 1. William had abandoned the fields and the Deakins settled in Collingwood (later a part of Fitzroy), where they lived as respectable suburbanites of modest means. William undertook a variety of jobs, storekeeping, water- carting and carrying, before becoming a partner in a coaching business and later manager of Cobb & Co. In 1. 86. 4 he became a day- boy at the nearby Melbourne Church of England Grammar School. Already Deakin read avidly and day- dreamed habitually, practices which hampered his academic studies.
He did not excel at games. Later he looked back upon his schooldays as a time of wasted opportunities. Nonetheless, he won a few subject prizes and survived happily enough to the upper school where he came under the influence of a young master, J. Thompson, and the school's renowned headmaster, Dr John Bromby, whose style of oratory, which Deakin's own later closely resembled, fascinated him. At last he was inspired to work seriously. He matriculated in 1. English and Latin, and 'passing well' in history, algebra and Euclid.
Deakin strayed into the study of law at the University of Melbourne. By evening he attended lectures, by day he earned pocket- money as a schoolteacher and private tutor.
He spoke frequently at the University Debating Club, where he met Charles Pearson. He gained further skill and experience in the Eclectic Association of Victoria, where members aired current notions on a range of intellectual topics.
He was prominent in the spiritualist movement, attending seances, testing phenomena, arranging lectures and conducting the Progressive Lyceum, the spiritualist Sunday school. In 1. 87. 4 he edited and contributed to the Lyceum Leader and a year later his small volume Quentin Massys: A Drama in Five Acts appeared. In 1. 87. 7 he published A New Pilgrim's Progress, a lengthy allegory imbued with the loftiest moral principles, and he became president of the Victorian Association of Spiritualists. He passed in 1. 87. Victorian Bar. He took chambers in Temple Court, where with little enthusiasm for law and no great expectations he wrote poetry, essays and literary criticism. An introduction in May 1. David Syme of the Melbourne Age rescued the restless Deakin from his near- briefless career.
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Syme, who became a close friend, engaged him as a paid contributor of reviews, leaders, sub- leaders and general articles on politics, literature and miscellaneous topics. In 1. 88. 0 he edited the Leader, the Age's weekly. He excelled at journalism, which became his major occupation for some five years and provided a useful source of income for most of his life. Syme also converted him from free trade beliefs to protectionist, a change which helped both his journalistic and political ambitions. Deakin's interest in Victorian politics had been aroused by the resignation of the liberal parliamentarian, George Higinbotham one of his boyhood heroes, the entry into parliament of Pearson, and the constitutional conflict which Deakin described in the memoir (1.
The Crisis in Victorian Politics, 1. With Syme's aid he became the Liberal candidate for West Bourke, a largely rural electorate, which he won narrowly in February 1. The young Deakin who entered parliament was an impressive figure. He was six feet (about 1. He spoke rapidly in a rich, baritone voice which, he claimed, bore no trace of 'provincial' accent.
In his maiden speech he startled members by announcing his resignation because of doubts about the fairness of the administration of the original poll. He lost the recontested by- election in August and lost again in the general election of February 1. Sir) Graham Berry's government. In July he headed the poll in West Bourke after James Service, 'Conservative' leader, had secured a dissolution of parliament. Despite his youth and inexperience, and in the face of opposition from his own party and the Age, he was prominent in negotiating a compromise between moderates on both sides and helped to secure the Council Reform Act of 1. On 3 April 1. 88.
Deakin married 1. Elizabeth Martha Anne ('Pattie'), daughter of wealthy Hugh Junor Browne, a prominent spiritualist. The marriage, disapproved of by the Brownes, brought no material benefit to the Deakins. They lived for a time with Deakin's parents: in 1. Llanarth, their house in Walsh Street, South Yarra, was completed. For the rest of his active life, Deakin walked, bicycled or took the tram into the city. From March 1. 88.
November 1. 89. 0 Deakin held office in coalition governments. He proved an able administrator, and he practised and polished the art of compromise. He introduced the Factories and Shops Act of 1. British legislation that had impressed the royal commission of 1. The Act, though mutilated by the Legislative Council, provided for the regulation and inspection of factories, enforced sanitary regulations, limited the hours of work of females and youths, and compensated workers for injury. He chaired the 1. Late in the year he led a small party to California to investigate irrigation and conservation schemes.
There he met the Chaffey brothers and reported enthusiastically on their experiments. The Chaffeys came to Victoria in 1. Mildura. In June Deakin introduced the first legislation in Australia to promote an irrigation system. The bill broke with traditional English riparian law by placing ownership of natural waters under the Crown and provided for the construction of state- aided irrigation works by local trusts.
Promise of early success faded because of technical problems, poor choice of associates by the Chaffeys, the depression of the 1. Australian history.
But in the long run successful irrigation and water schemes became a feature of rural Victoria and Australia. Late in 1. 88. 5 Berry and Service retired and were succeeded, as leaders of the coalition, by Deakin and Duncan Gillies. Deakin, chief secretary, also took the portfolio of water- supply to which was added, in 1. He was Victoria's principal representative at the Colonial Conference of 1.
In London he met and impressed many prominent public figures, politicians, writers and intellectuals and formed lasting friendships. At the conference he played the role of native- born Victorian patriot pressing 'colonial' interests. He argued forcibly for better terms in the naval agreement, under which the colonies paid an annual subsidy towards the cost of an auxiliary squadron for use in Australian waters. With Sir Samuel Griffith, Service and Berry he confronted Lord Salisbury, prime minister and foreign secretary, over the issue of the New Hebrides. British officials recognized in him the authentic, but not always welcome, voice of colonial nationalism.
He returned home to a triumphant welcome. Melbourne at this time was indeed marvellous and a massive inflow of British capital fuelled the Victorian boom. The coalition won the election of March 1. Deakin bore ministerial responsibility—caused the government's defeat in October 1. By then the land boom was starting to waver and soon the bubble burst.
Deakin, like many contemporaries of his social class, speculated heavily in the rush to be rich: he lost his own and his father's savings. Unlike many he repaid his debts. Nonetheless, the picture of him as an innocent intellectual unwittingly caught up in the brutal world of business seems too kind. He was chairman or director of many dubious companies, including those of the notorious boomer James Munro; Deakin's friend Theodore Fink possibly sometimes persuaded him to lend his name. As joint coalition leader he shared power and responsibility in a government whose own borrowing and investment policies contributed much to the onset of the collapse and the severity of the depression. As an individual investor he sought quick and easy profit with the rest of them. Outwardly, after the coalition's defeat and financial disaster, Deakin seemed his familiar confident self.
Inwardly, as copious note- books and diaries reveal, he was disillusioned. Tortured by self- doubt, he longed to restore his self- respect. He spent the next ten years as an influential back- bencher, the member from 1. Essendon and Flemington. Syme urged him to replace Munro as premier, (Sir) George Turner consulted him about the composition of his government in 1. He returned to the practice of law. He was engaged in several major cases, the most celebrated being as defender without fee in 1.
Frederick Deeming, and as junior to James Purves in 1. Syme in a libel case. A respectable income at the Bar supplemented his parliamentary salary and helped to support a growing family, which in 1. In 1. 89. 3 he published Irrigated India and Temple and Tomb in India, following a short working visit to India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) financed by Syme. He read everything that came his way in English literature, biography, history and philosophy, French in the original, and German and the classics in translation.
He was active in the Theosophical Society until 1. Australian Church, led by Charles Strong. He retained a wide interest in public affairs through the Protectionist Association, the National Anti- Sweating League, the Australian Natives' Association, the Imperial Federation League (of which he became president in 1. Federal Council of Australasia. But his main preoccupation in the 1. Federation movement.
Deakin's interest in Federation had been stimulated by Service and heightened by experience at the Colonial Conference of 1.