AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 59, Issue 4220, 6 December 1939, Page 4

AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

DRAWN AROUND SUCCESSFUL MEN. You cannot tell the whole truth in an epigram nor paint the portrait of an age in the sweeping lines and vivid colours of impressionism. That, however, is what Mr Francis Clancy has tried to do in setting out in “They Built a Nation” to portray in words Australia’s development from the days of the First Fleet to the present time. The Brisbane Courier-Mail says he has provided readers with highlights in glowing colours, certainly expressive and novel, but lacking frequently in proportion and in those lights and shades that are essential for a good picture, either plastic or verbal. He has written his history around successful men; in fact, successful men seem to count with him more than movements. At least, however, he has selected men who were representative of great events and incidents in the history of Australia; and, after all, a lot of our national history has been dominated by personality, and often by the personality of one man.

In the first section of “They Built a Nation,” which is published in Sydney, the reader is introduced to Governor Phillip (mistakenly described as Sir Arthur Phillip), John Macarthur. Robert Campbell, and Simeon Lord Through them and others is presented a striking picture of Sydney when it was the most bizarre settlement in the British’ Empire, with a footing on the shores of Pork Jackson so insecure and precarious that only men of great optimism could have expected it to become even self-supporting. Yet within that period the farming industry was started by James Ruse, the first man in the community, bond or free, to take himself off Government rations.

The wool industry had its beginnings in the little flocks of John Macarthur, “foremost man in the monopolistic ring, and leader of the offlcei- class, personifying its ruthlessness, its ambition, and its desire for overwhelming authority.” In Robert Campbell and Simeon Lord the young colony had men who were the driving power behind trade and commerce, both nation-builders in their way. This is not baldly stated by Mr Clancy, but he shows the handicaps these men had to overcome, the privations they had to endure, the narrow-minded jealousies and fierce opposition against which they had to contend; and the famines, droughts, booms, and depressions that very nearly destroyed all their plans and policies, and seemed likely tc ruin the future of the young colony. Governor Lachlan Macquarie becomes the centre of another age of marked progress. It was he who transformed a British gaol into a colony, although in doing that he was subjected to the almost continuous animosity of Samuel Marsden, Jeffery Bent, and John Thomas Bigge, who represented the Exclusionists. The Exclusionists refused to have any association with the Emancipists or colonists who had come from England under sentence, and had worked out their terms of imprisonment. Judge Bent refused to admit to practice three Emancipists who had been lawyers in England; and again and again lawsuits were decided against plaintiffs on no better ground than that they were Emancipists. Macquarie openly fought the Exclusionists and suffered for his courage; but history at least will say that he was right although more courageous perhaps than tactful. In summing up the character of Macquarie Mr Clancy quotes the wellknown phrase of Sir Roger Therry that Macquarie found a garrison and a gaol and left the broad and deep foundations of an Empire. Around William Charles Wentworth revolves the fight for constitutional freedom and self-government. In many respects Wentworth was the greatest statesman of the early days; in fact it has been contended that modern Australia owes more to Wentworth in its constitutional and educational development than to any other half-dozen men. He had wisdom beyond his contemporaries and a patriotism that has never been surpassed by his successors. Mr Clancy does not mention his great work for education, but he agrees that it was the foresight of

Wentworth in dealing with the series of financial crises in the “hungry forties” that helped to place the colony on its feet so that it could inarch upward, towards another era of prosperity. Around Sir Henry Parkes revolves the story of the fight for compulsory primary education and the beginning of the policy that gave us federation. In his references to Parkes and his battle for primary education Mi Clancy appears to have been swayed more by old-time prejudices than by historical accuracy.

It is true that Parkes was astute; he t may have been unscrupulous (most politicians of* that age were troubled by the same malady), and it is very likely that at times he appealed to prejudice rather than to intelligence; but it is not true that Parkes was responsible for the bitter sectarianism that for nearly half a century clouded every phase of the colony’s political and social life. Parkes had his weaknesses, which were those of the age in which he lived, but he gave to his country both a patern scheme of primary education which is in operation to-day throughout the Commonwealth and an irresistible impulse towards federation.

One great movement in Australia’s history that Mr Clancy ignores save for a passing sentence is the fight for federation. In the brief reference that is made to, it Parkes and Sir George Reid are casually mentioned, but there is no mention of the great work of Sir Edmund Barton or of Mr Alfred Deakin. Parkes’ real successor in the campaign for federation was Alfred Deakin.

Throughout his book Mr Clancy seems to have set himself out to make Australian progress revolve around a few men from New South Wales. Even the settlement of Queensland is totally ignored! that of Victoria is dismissed with a more or less contemptuous reference to the commercial shrewdness of John Batman. He is also not very concerned with the development of the pastoral industry and the small towns that were founded on the outskirts of the homestead paddocks. In broad sweeping strokes Mr Clancy carries the reader through the gold era and into the boom period that was followed by depression and the bank smashes of the early nineties. He touches briefly on the Great War, to be followed by another boom period and the world-wide depression of recent years. In a preface, in which he sweeps across the century and a-half in less than five pages, Mr Justice Evatt shows how important is the story of Austraia’s development, and suggests that Mr Clancy’s story, told in “easy running rhythmic style,” should have a wide appeal. It certainly will; but it is a pity that Mr Clancy did not ments.