The Toowoomba Chronicle, Tuesday, 26 July 1904, p. 3
THE DEATH OF JOHN DOUGLAS.
With the death at Thursday Island last Saturday of the Hon.
John Douglas there passed away one of the most notable figures in the early
political history of Queensland. A man of considerable ability, he had a
remarkable experience of combined legislative and administrative life; that is
to say, in the Public Service as well as Parliamentary. Few, indeed if any, of
our Australian public men had such an experience in the service of the State.
Over fifty years ago, in the first flush of the gold
discoveries, he was a Gold Fields Commissioner in the mother State. Then, after
a brief interval devoted to pastoral pursuits, he entered Parliamentary life as
a representative for Darling Downs in the New South Wales Parliament. There was
no “Queensland” in those days, and the Darling Downs was a huge electorate. It
was the irony of fate that it was the Darling Downs which commenced Mr.
Douglas’s Parliamentary career, and it was the chief town of the Darling Downs
which over a quarter of a century later terminated it.
But for a Parliament sitting in Sydney the Darling Downs was
a scarcely convenient electorate to contest, and Mr. Douglas found in Camden a
much more convenient one. Then some years later came Separation, and the
election of the first Queensland Parliament. Mr. Douglas was not in the first
batch of members elected to that first Parliament, and when on April 21, 1863,
the late Hon. W. H. Groom first took his seat for Drayton and Toowoomba, Mr.
Douglas was not a member. The seat for Port Curtis was then vacant—at any rate,
Mr. Douglas was elected for it in 1863, but he was unable to take his seat in
that first Parliament as it was dissolved on May 20, in consequence of the
defeat of the Herbert Government on their Railway policy.
But he sat in the succeeding Parliaments, and in 1866 he
joined the Macalister Ministry, first without portfolio and subsequently as
Postmaster-General. His colleagues were Arthur Macalister, Robert Ramsay
Mackenzie, Charles Lilley, and Joshua Peter Bell. All of these have long since
passed away, so that with John Douglas passes the last member of the second
Ministry of Queensland. The reign of that Ministry was a very short one—in
fact, only six months.
The Macalister party again came into power in the following
year. Mr. Douglas was not a member of it first, but he succeeded John Donald McLean
as Colonial Treasurer six months after its formation, and later on he succeeded
John Watts in the same Ministry as Minister for Works. We next find him as
Postmaster-General in the Lilley Ministry in 1868-9 and afterwards he went to
London as Agent-General.
He returned to Queensland in 1875 and found his old Liberal
chief, Arthur Macalister, once more in power, and among Arthur Macalister’s
colleagues at one period in the life of that Liberal Ministry were Thomas McIlwraith
and Samuel Walker Griffith. McIlwraith soon left it to throw all the weight of
his undoubted political genius into the Conservative Camp.
In the following year Arthur Macalister had a turn at the
Agent-Generalship, and John Douglas being returned for Maryborough became joint
head of the Ministry with George Thorn as Premier. Mr. Thorn was really only
Premier nominally, and after about nine months he made way for John Douglas,
under whom he accepted a subordinate position.
That Ministry was opposed by a strong combination, led by
Sir Thomas McIlwraith and Sir Arthur Palmer. Mr. Douglas, like Mr. Thorn, was
considered by members of the party too easy-going, not sufficiently aggressive,
despite his undoubted political experience. The real brain of the Ministry was
considered to be Sir Samuel Walker Griffith, and accordingly when the Douglas
Government were defeated at the general elections in 1879 and Sir Thomas McIlwraith
came into power, the Liberal party elected the member they considered their
ablest one as Leader—namely, the then Mr. Griffith.
It was after this that John Douglas made what was perhaps
the biggest political mistake of his lifetime. For some reason or other, he saw
fit to leave his old Liberal colleagues and join the Conservative McIlwraith-Palmer
party, and particularly at the most inopportune period. In 1883 the McIlwraith
party induced him to contest North Brisbane against S. W. Griffith and William
Brookes, just at the time when the Liberal tide was flowing strongest against
the McIlwraith policy of syndicate railways and black labour. John Douglas
could not have come forward as a Conservative candidate at a more inopportune
period. Accordingly, he was at the bottom of the poll.
A few weeks later he chivalrously consented to lead a second
“forlorn hope,” by contesting Drayton and Toowoomba, which had a similar
result. After this he retired from public life, and two years later he was
appointed Government Resident at Thursday Island, and on the death of Sir Peter
Scratchley was appointed Her late Majesty’s Special Commissioner for British
New Guinea, which he administered as a protectorate for nearly three years.
On the proclamation of British New Guinea as a British
possession, he returned to his former position at Thursday Island. In both
capacities, Special Commissioner and Government Resident, he rendered yeoman
service to Australia for nearly 20 years. He had no easy task, having to deal
with some very unpleasant material, but he brought to it a kindly spirit of
patience and justice that gained him the admiration of all.
It may be said of John Douglas that, however one may have
disagreed with him politically, he had no personal enemy. As a political leader
he was conciliatory rather than aggressive. He was not a “born fighter” in the
sense that a McIlwraith is—he was too chivalrous in many respects to be
considered a born fighter—and he was really more of the born administrator than
leader. His high intellectual abilities, his refined culture and kindly
benevolent disposition impelled him more to the council room and study than the
platform. Nevertheless, he was a charming speaker, though, perhaps, he was an
even more charming writer.
As a personal friend, in giving an appreciation of him in
yesterday’s “Courier,” well remarked:—
The death of the Hon. John Douglas removes from the public
life of Queensland one who, by reason of his natural intellectual gifts, his
educational attainments, his wide experience of men and affairs, and his well
balanced and essentially fair mind, was eminently qualified for a leading part
in building up the institutions of a young country. To the traits mentioned add
honesty of purpose and honorable, even chivalrous, character, and we have a
fair view of the mental side of the Hon. John Douglas. Physically he was a
fine, robust specimen of the Anglo-Saxon—alert, active, enduring. His face
revealed his generous nature; his brow, undignified in later years by an
abundance of silvered, waving hair, was that of a man of noble instincts. There
was in him and about him always a calm dignity and courtesy which, however
estimable in the eyes of his private friends, did not help him in the
rough-and-tumble fighting of political life. It was said that he was not a born
political leader in that he was not a fighter. Those who knew John Douglas
privately and closely would put the expression thus: He was not a born
political leader, because he always fought in the open, and his blows were
never below the belt. He was not personally aggressive, did not possess the
aggressiveness that persuades, and it is no secret to those who watched Queensland
political developments in the late seventies that his lack of that very quality
led to the selection of another leader of the old Liberal party. Though
probably lacking in the capacity for organising big political movements, and
for wide processes of development, Mr. Douglas was a good, sound administrator,
whose honor was never impugned. He lived for many years in the outposts of this
country and in New Guinea, administering the laws given him to meet cases, and
using his own discretion where no laws existed—when savage people had to be
dealt with—and there has been no occasion upon which his judgment, his tact, or
his broad sense of right and wrong have been questioned. Away in the great
gateway that leads to and from the East, Mr. Douglas has had under his care a
community as diverse as one would meet at Port Said, and at times the elements
were bitterly and openly contentious. Again, he has had to deal with
aboriginals whose instincts to plunder and murder are well known; again, with
employers of aboriginals—white men and yellow—whose natures were lower and more
devilish than the savages employed; again, with the natives of New Guinea and
of the intervening islands lying between the Queensland coast and that of the
Possession. Can any one point to an instance of lack of capacity on the part of
the Government Resident (or High Commissioner) in handling the difficult
material which makes up the population on the fringes of Torres Straits? Has
there ever been a display of temper or tyranny? On the other hand, the
Government of the State and of the Empire in so far as it was entrusted to the
Hon. John Douglas has been carried out in a lofty and practical spirit, with
firmness, but with kindness, with unflinching justice, yet with patience. In
Parliament and on public platforms Mr. Douglas was more remarkable as a
pleasant speaker, dipping his eloquence from a “well of purest English
undefiled,” than as a forceful critic or advocate. As a writer he was,
perforce, restricted to space, and his ideas put in the concrete form often
sparkled.
The above appreciation is a well-deserved tribute to the
memory of one who, as we have said, rendered yeoman public service to Australia
in many capacities, but, perhaps, best of all as the Administrator of the most
difficult part of the Commonwealth to govern. After nearly half a century,
broadly speaking, of public service, he now passes away deeply regretted by
all.
