John Douglas and the 1859 Darling Downs election - why he won

Why Douglas Was Successfully Returned for the Darling Downs in the 1859 New South Wales election

John Douglas entered parliament for the first time in July 1859. The result was much closer, and much more revealing, than the bare fact of his election suggests.

A three-way contest

The Darling Downs returned two members to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. Three men contested the seats: John Douglas of Talgai, William Handcock, the Drayton storekeeper, and John Donald McLean of Westbrook. The official return was extraordinarily close: Douglas 383, Handcock 377 and McLean 375. Only eight votes separated first from third, and McLean missed the second seat by two. The result therefore demands explanation rather than the easy assumption that Douglas simply enjoyed overwhelming popularity.

The election was held in a district changing quickly. Farms were being fenced, houses built and towns expanding. The franchise had recently been widened, bringing many more adult men into electoral politics. Land, roads, bridges, schools and communications were immediate questions in a region where distance and access to resources shaped daily life.

Three candidates, three overlapping constituencies

The candidates did not represent three perfectly separate classes, but each possessed a recognisable social base. McLean was the wealthy owner of Westbrook and the candidate most readily associated with the established pastoral interest. Handcock was a self-made storekeeper. A correspondent signing himself “An Elector” described him as a man who had risen “from the people”, “one of themselves”, who understood their wants. That popular identification helps explain Handcock’s strength in the principal towns.

Douglas occupied more ambiguous ground. He was aristocratic by birth and an active squatter at Talgai. He was not merely playing at pastoralism: Talgai had imported wool-washing machinery, and in February 1859 Douglas spent £250 on ten rams, including two derived from high-quality Saxon merino stock. Yet contemporaries repeatedly thought his politics unusually liberal for a man of his class. “An Elector” preferred him to McLean because Douglas was “more liberal” and would “not be influenced by any party”. Other newspapers remarked that he formed his own opinions and would “see and judge for himself”.

A pastoralist who challenged pastoral privilege

Douglas’s land policy explains why the label “squatter” is insufficient. He defended the economic importance of pastoral production and rejected remedies he thought unsound, including Handcock’s scheme of free selection with deferred payment. At the same time he wanted oversized runs resurveyed and ultimately subdivided, opposed privileged access to valuable water frontages and argued that particularly favoured pastoral country should bear higher assessment.

There was no contradiction in Douglas’s own mind. He distinguished productive enterprise from privilege. He could invest heavily in improving Talgai while arguing that occupation of Crown land did not entitle the pastoral interest to monopolise public resources. That position made him acceptable to pastoral electors without making him simply the candidate of the pastoral establishment.

The “practical politics of life”

Douglas’s election address gave the broader philosophy behind these positions. He welcomed the enlarged franchise but did not pretend that popular government was infallible. He was neither “fool nor knave enough”, he said, to regard any pure political principle as a universal remedy. Political capacity had to be learned through “habits of self-reliance” in local affairs - townships, corporations, charities and other institutions.

He then turned to what he called the “practical politics of life”: education, land, roads, bridges and telegraphic communication. At nomination meetings he supported the National school system, wanted schools established at Toowoomba and Dalby, favoured better salaries for competent teachers and opposed state aid to religion. He spoke sympathetically of the working classes and admired men who had risen from humble origins through ability.

Handcock nevertheless had the stronger claim to be the working man’s candidate. His supporters could point to his own rise “from the people”. Douglas’s appeal was different. Although socially privileged, he was not seen as politically captive to privilege. That made him potentially acceptable to working men who preferred Handcock as well as to pastoral electors who preferred McLean.

The polling geography

The booth figures show why a simple town-versus-country interpretation fails. Douglas did not carry the three principal centres. At Warwick Handcock polled 117, McLean 84 and Douglas 64. At Toowoomba the figures were 74, 64 and 37; at Drayton McLean led with 54, Handcock had 46 and Douglas 45.

Douglas made up the difference across smaller settlements and outlying districts. He led at Dalby, Leyburn, Clifton, Jimbour and Maryland, tied McLean at Jondaryan and Cecil Plains, and remained competitive elsewhere. His strength at Clifton and nearby Canal Creek also reflected the Talgai district where he had been a magistrate, pastoralist and public figure for several years.

These were not simply “squatter votes”. Large stations such as Jimbour and Jondaryan were communities containing employees, tradesmen and others dependent on the pastoral economy but not themselves pastoral proprietors. Douglas could therefore compete with McLean in pastoral districts without those returns proving that the great squatters had rallied behind him.

The importance of the second vote

The electoral system is essential to understanding Douglas’s success. Darling Downs returned two members, and an elector could vote for two candidates. The totals were therefore not three exclusive voting blocs. A townsman whose first allegiance was to Handcock could also vote Douglas. A pastoral elector who preferred McLean could do the same.

Douglas was particularly well placed to receive that cross-cutting support. Indeed, before becoming McLean’s electoral competitor he had signed the requisition asking McLean to stand. During the campaign he denied coalition, said he had not canvassed a single vote and described himself as standing “on independent grounds”. After the result he defended McLean against abusive placards. Political competition did not require personal hostility.

Why Douglas finished first

The best explanation of the result is therefore not that Douglas commanded the largest single social bloc. Handcock had the clearer popular and urban identity; McLean the clearer connection with the established pastoral interest. Douglas had fewer barriers to receiving support across those constituencies.

His pastoral experience reassured rural interests, but his liberal politics distinguished him from the more conservative pastoral establishment. His support for the enlarged franchise, public education, local self-government, roads and communications, and his willingness to restrict pastoral privilege gave newly enfranchised and less wealthy electors reasons to support him. His years of magistracy, Separation agitation and local public work had also made him known well beyond Talgai.

That breadth mattered more than dominance. Douglas lost heavily to Handcock in Warwick and Toowoomba and did not head Drayton, yet accumulated enough votes across the rest of the electorate to finish first. In a two-member contest decided by only eight votes from first to third, being an acceptable second choice across otherwise different constituencies was probably decisive.

An already formed politician

Douglas later claimed that he had entered politics “as a kind of relaxation”. The evidence from 1855–59 makes that recollection difficult to take literally. Before his election he had already campaigned for Separation, defended responsible government, argued about the proper authority of public institutions, challenged administrative failures and developed a reputation for independent judgement.

By 1859 he had also articulated most of the political themes that would recur through his career: representative government, local responsibility, education, practical development, wider opportunity, productive enterprise and resistance to entrenched privilege. His election did not create John Douglas the politician. It was the point at which a political life already taking shape on the Darling Downs entered parliament.

Sources and further reading

·  John Douglas, 'To the Electors of the District of Darling Downs', North Australian, Ipswich and General Advertiser, 19 April 1859; republished 9 June 1859.

·  'An Elector', 'Original Correspondence', Moreton Bay Courier, 11 May 1859, p. 2.

·   Darling Downs Gazette, 12 May, 30 June and 28 July 1859, election commentary and returns.

·   Brisbane Courier, 22 June 1859, p. 2, 'Drayton'.

·   John Douglas to the editor, Moreton Bay Courier, 6 August 1859 (letter dated Brisbane, 3 August 1859).

·  New South Wales official electoral return, Darling Downs, poll 5 July 1859: Douglas 383; Handcock 377; McLean 375.

·  Maurice French, 'The Leading Man of Drayton: William Handcock, Frontier Storekeeper, and the Election of 1859', Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, vol. 13, no. 3 (August 1987), pp. 97–112.

·  Jeremy Hodes, John Douglas 1828–1904: The Uncompromising Liberal (PhD thesis, Central Queensland University, 2006), especially the discussion of the 1859 election.