he preferred to remain a private member. By Syme’s invitation he visited India in 1891; his investigations of irrigation and his comments on British rule and Indian life, religion, and art are recorded in Irrigated India (1892) and Temple and Tomb (1893).
From 1892 Deakin worked seriously at the bar as a means of livelihood, and his main political work was devoted to furthering the federation of Australia. While still in office, he had been a member of the conference at Melbourne in 1890, and he was asked to represent Victoria at the conventions of 1891 and 1897-1898. Never a great constitutional lawyer, his direct contribution to the framing of the constitution was of small account, but he excelled in effecting the essential compromises between conflicting views, and it was largely due to his platform advocacy that the people of Victoria were induced in 1898 to approve federation by an overwhelming vote. In 1900 he was sent by the Victorian government to London to take part in the discussions with Mr. Joseph Chamberlain as to the passage of the Constitution Bill through the imperial parliament, and he played an important part in securing the compromise which reserved to the Commonwealth high court the power of deciding all constitutional issues.
Deakin’s services to federation were naturally rewarded by his appointment as attorney-general in the first Commonwealth ministry (January 1901) of (Sir) Edmund Barton [q.v.], and he was the moving spirit of the ministry. On Barton’s retirement in September 1903 to become a judge of the newly established high court, Deakin became prime minister. Convinced that responsible government could only be worked on the basis of two parties, and confronted by two opposition parties, the supporters of a revenue tariff, led by (Sir) George Reid [q.v.], and the labour party, he invited overtures for coalition. Neither party responded, and, as a convinced federalist, Deakin refused the labour demand to subject the public services of the States to the control of the Commonwealth court of conciliation and arbitration. Defeat ensued, and a labour ministry held a feeble tenure of office from April to August 1904, when it was ousted by a coalition between Reid and a section of Deakin’s following. Deakin had declined to serve under Reid, but had consented to a compact to last until May 1906; in June 1905, however, dislike of Reid and anxiety lest a truce should prove harmful to protection induced him to break his compact. Reid naturally resented this act, and labour would not do more than give the new ministry lukewarm support, so that its period of office, terminated by the defection of labour in November 1908, was largely barren of achievement.
In 1907 Deakin revisited England for the colonial conference; his chief endeavour on that occasion was to convince the public of the necessity of consolidating the Empire by preferential tariffs, despite the decisive verdict of the British electorate in 1906 against protection; but he also sought the concurrence of the Admiralty in his scheme for an independent Australian navy. His defence bill of 1908 was taken up in part by his successor, Andrew Fisher; and from June 1909 to April 1910 he enjoyed, by coalition with (Sir) Joseph Cook, a brief term of office, marked by the participation of the Commonwealth in an imperial naval and military conference which sanctioned Deakin’s naval scheme in its main idea. The public, however, resented as dishonourable this coalition of old enemies, and the general election of 1910 terminated Deakin’s period of office. His mental powers, fatally overstrained by his efforts of 1907, had long been impaired, and though loyalty kept him leader of the opposition until the end of 1912, it was at the cost of any chance of recuperation. A brief tenure of the chairmanship of a royal commission on food supplies, appointed in August 1914, and a visit to San Francisco in 1915 to represent Australia at the Panama-Pacific international exhibition, ended his official work; his memory, and his power of co-ordinating his ideas, were steadily failing; a flying visit to London in 1916 brought no relief, and thereafter until his death at Melbourne 7 October 1919, his time was spent there or at his seaside cottage. He was survived by his wife, Pattie, eldest daughter of H. Junor Browne, a Melbourne merchant, to whom he was married in 1882, and by three daughters.
Deakin’s contemporaries reproached him with an unpractical idealism and lack of understanding of the character of the Australian public. His ideals were in fact sane and moderate, but his anxiety to secure rapid results led him throughout his career to seek coalitions which were not very effective. He aimed at protection for manufacturers, with improved conditions for workers and regard for consumers, but only the first of these objects ‘was achieved’ by his ministries.
150
