Owing to the carelessness of Reid in matters of finance, the ministry was brought down on a minor issue, and Lyne became premier and colonial treasurer of New South Wales on 14 September 1899. His tenure of this office was not prolonged, as he aimed at achieving a place in Commonwealth politics. As premier of the senior colony he was given by Lord Hopetoun, the governor-general, the opportunity of forming the first Commonwealth ministry; but it was impossible for him to secure sufficient support to do this, and he accepted office under Barton, as minister of home affairs, on 1 January 1901. On the resignation of Mr. C. C. Kingston he became, in August 1903, minister of trade and customs. He retained this portfolio in the ministry of Mr. A. Deakin [q.v.], formed on Sir E. Barton's resignation, which lasted until April 1904. In general sympathy with Labour, he observed a benevolent attitude towards the brief ministry of Mr. J. C. Watson which ensued on Deakin's defeat, and opposed the Reid-McLean coalition which ousted that ministry from office. When the second Deakin administration was formed by a fresh political shuffle in July 1905, he was given his former office. Two years later, when Sir John (afterwards Baron) Forrest [q.v.] parted company with Deakin, Lyne naturally obtained the vacant post of treasurer, which he retained until the fall of the ministry in November 1908. He was bitterly opposed to the coalition of Deakin's supporters with the party of Reid, which took place in 1909, and no place was found for him in the last Deakin administration. In 1911 he visited England, but his health was manifestly impaired, and he died at Sydney, New South Wales, on 3 August 1913.
Overshadowed in New South Wales politics by Reid and Barton, and in federal politics by Deakin, Lyne, who was created K.C.M.G. in 1900, was a man of pertinacious character, and capable of much hard, detailed work, as was shown in his elaboration of the customs tariff in 1907–1908. His views were somewhat narrowly Australian; he regarded an importer, even of British goods, as something of a traitor to Commonwealth industries; and he was a protagonist of the movement to compel British shipping to conform to Australian standards of manning and pay. But his visit to England for the Colonial Navigation Conference and the Colonial Conference of 1907 widened his outlook, and increased his appreciation of the imperial connexion.
Lyne married in 1870 Martha Coates (died 1903), eldest daughter of Edward Carr Shaw, formerly of Terenure, co. Dublin, and afterwards of Glamorgan, Tasmania. They had one son and three daughters.
[B. R. Wise, Making of the Australian Commonwealth, 1913; H. G. Turner, First Decade of the Australian Commonwealth, 1911; W. Murdoch, Alfred Deakin, 1923; New South Wales and Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates; Dictionary of Australasian Biography, 1892; personal knowledge.]
LYTTELTON, ALFRED (1857–1913), lawyer and statesman, born at Hagley, Worcestershire, 7 February 1857, was the eighth son of George William, fourth Baron Lyttelton [q.v.], by his first wife, Mary, second daughter of Sir Stephen R. Glynne and sister of Mrs. W. E. Gladstone. Going to Eton in 1868, he inherited and surpassed the athletic fame of his brothers, and there first exhibited the extraordinary gift of personal charm which distinguished him all through his life. His unbounded popularity and the fact that he was the finest player of his time, of cricket, football, rackets, and fives, made him like a king in the school. Proceeding to Trinity College, Cambridge, he was in the Cambridge eleven from 1876 to 1879, being captain of the 1879 eleven which was never defeated. After leaving Cambridge, where he obtained a second class in the historical tripos, he continued to play first-class cricket for some years (his play was called by W. G. Grace ‘the champagne of cricket’), and he long held the amateur championship in tennis. He was called to the bar in 1881. From 1882 to 1885 he was legal private secretary to Sir Henry James (afterwards Lord James of Hereford). He practised with increasing success, till he entered the Cabinet in 1903. His mind was that of the judge rather than that of the advocate, and he had latterly more business as an arbitrator than as counsel. Lord Darling has said of him that ‘his influence amongst his fellows was out of all proportion to his practice’.
The years between 1881 and 1895 were a period of strenuous professional work, relieved, however, by cricket, by hunting, and above all by membership of that attractive coterie in which his own relations and connexions, the Lytteltons, Talbots, Gladstones, and Cavendishes, were united with other brilliant representatives of the political and intellectual society of that generation. Here he met his first wife, Laura, daughter of Sir Charles Ten--
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