the circulation increased. Popular anger prevented the premier, O'Shanassy, from carrying a libel bill designed in April 1863 to gag Syme, and in August 1864 a protectionist house was returned, with the result that a first tariff bill was passed in March 1866 by the ministry of (Sir) James M'Culloch. In 1868 the importers, despite Syme's resolute adherence to his policy, renewed their advertisements in 'The Age'; he thereupon brought out the paper at 1d., and its circulation more than doubled in a week. In 1869 Syme went to England on his only holiday since 1860, and a fresh endeavour by the importers to boycott his paper in his absence failed.
Syme subsequently continued his campaign both on land and tariff questions with unabated vigour. His insistence on still higher duties led to a long conflict between the two houses in which supply was more than once refused. In critical situations Syme's advice was solicited and adopted by the governor and premier, and after 1881, when Syme forced (Sir) Graham Berry [q. v. Suppl. II], the premier, to withdraw the tariff measure which he had announced to the house the day before, but of which Syme disapproved, Syme claimed with justice to exercise until his death the deciding voice in the appointment of every Victorian premier and cabinet minister. In 1887, during a period of great prosperity, parliament, mainly yielding to the appeals of landjobbers and speculators, accepted a scheme for covering the whole colony with a network of non-paying railways under the direction of official railway commissioners. Syme attacked the movement in a series of articles which ultimately in 1892 forced the government to abandon its railway scheme and dismiss the commissioners. The chief commissioner, Mr. Richard Speight, claimed 25.000l. damages from Syme for libel. The litigation lasted from March 1890 to September 1894, and although Syme won, Speight's bankruptcy made him liable for his own costs, which amounted to 50,000l. The paper's prosperity was confirmed, and it became the fountain-head of all progressive legislation. To its suggestion the colony owed anti-sweating and factory acts, and it initiated the movement which issued in the levy of an income-tax. Syme sent Mr. J. L. Dow to America and Mr. Alfred Deakiu to India at his own cost in order to study systems of irrigation. He supported Australian federation and first adopted the policy of conscription and the formation of an Australian navy. Towards the end of his life he realised that protection, while it had destroyed the monopoly of the importers, was enriching the manufacturers at the expense of the workers. He thereupon advocated a 'new protection' system and persuaded parliament to pass measures to protect industry against rings and trusts. Syme, who declined the offer of a knighthood, died of heart disease at Blythewoode, Kew, near Melbourne, on 14 Feb. 1908, and was buried at Melbourne. On his deathbed he dictated an account of his career which was edited by Mr. Ambrose Pratt and published in 1908. By his will he left the sum of 50,000Z. to various Victorian charities. In 1904 he had endowed an annual prize of 100l for original Australian research in biology at Melbourne University.
On 17 August 1858 he married Annabella, daughter of John William Johnson of Yorkshire and Melbourne. He left five sons and two daughters.
Syme prepared interesting expositions of his economic, political, and philosophical principles. In 1877 he published 'Outlines of an Industrial Science,' an exposition of protection which has since become a text-book, and in 1882 ’Representative Government in England,' a discussion of cabinet government and the party system, in which he advocates elective ministries and a system under which constituents should be able to dismiss their members without waiting for an election. At the end of his life he published two books on philosophy. The first, 'On the Modification of Organisms' (1890; 2nd edit. 1892), was an attack on Darwin's theory of natural selection. The second, 'The Soul: a Study and an Argument' (1903), continuing the earlier theme, attacked both materialism and the current argument for design, and described Syme's own belief as a kind of pantheistic teleology. Syme was also a contributor to the 'Westminster,' the 'Edinburgh,' and the 'Fortnightly' Reviews.
[Meynell's Dict. of Australas. Biog.; David Syme, by Ambrose Pratt (with several photographic reproductions; West Australian, Argus, Age, Herald, Adelaide Advertiser, and Adelaide Register, 15 Feb. 1908.]
SYMES-THOMPSON, EDMUND (1837–1906), physician, born in London on 16 Nov. 1837, was son of Theophilus Thompson [q. v.] by his wife Anna Maria, daughter of Nathaniel Walker of Stroud. The name Symes was adopted by his father on inheriting property from the Rev. Richard
