Samuel Griffith

Sir Samuel Walker Griffith GCMG, QC, (21 June 1845 – 9 August 1920) was an Australian politician, Premier of Queensland, Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, and a principal author of the Constitution of Australia.

Griffith was born in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, the younger son of the Rev. Edward Griffith, a Congregational minister and his wife, Mary, second daughter of Peter Walker. Although of Welsh extraction, his forebears for at least three generations had lived in England. The family migrated to Queensland (then the Moreton Bay district of New South Wales) when Samuel was eight. He was educated at schools in Ipswich, Sydney, Maitland and Brisbane (from 1860), towns where his father was a minister, then at the University of Sydney, where he graduated B.A. in 1863, with first-class honours in classics, mathematics and natural science. During his course he was awarded the Cooper and Barker scholarships and other prizes.

In 1865, he gained the T. S. Mort Travelling Fellowship. Travelling to Europe, he spent some of his time in Italy, and became much attached to the Italian people and their literature. Many years after, he was to become the first Australian translator of Dante (The Inferno of Dante Alighieri in 1908).

On his return to Brisbane, Griffith studied law and was articled to Arthur Macalister, in one of whose ministries Griffith afterwards had his first portfolio. Griffith was called to the bar in 1867.

In 1870, Griffith returned to Sydney to complete an M.A.. In the same year, he married Julia Janet Thomson.

In 1872 Griffith was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, for East Moreton. Throughout his career he saw himself as a lawyer first and a politician second, and continued to appear at the Bar even when he was in office. Griffith took silk in 1876 as a Queen's Counsel. In Parliament he gained a reputation as a liberal reformer. He was Attorney-General, Minister for Education and Minister for Works, and became leader of the liberal party in 1879. His great enemy was the conservative leader Sir Thomas McIlwraith, whom he accused (correctly) of corruption.

Griffith became Premier in November 1883 displacing McIlwraith. Griffith's election as Premier was assisted by auditor-general William Leworthy Goode Drew's report on the colony's loans having reached over £13 million. Griffith won the next election largely on his policy of preventing the importation of Kanaka labour from the islands. He passed an act for this purpose, but it was found that the danger of the destruction of the sugar industry was so great that the measure was never made operative. Recruiting was, however, placed under regulations and some of the worst abuses were swept away. Griffith took a special interest in British New Guinea, and was eventually responsible for the sending of Sir William MacGregor there in 1888.

Griffith held the Premier's office until 1888, and was made a Knight Commander of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1886, before receiving an advancement to Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George in 1895. Griffith was regarded as a close ally of the labour movement. He introduced a bill to legalise trade unions, and declared that "the great problem of this age is not how to accumulate wealth but how to secure its more equitable distribution". In 1888 his government was defeated. In opposition he wrote radical articles for The Boomerang, William Lane's socialist newspaper.

But in 1890 Griffith suddenly betrayed his radical friends and became Premier again at the head of an unlikely alliance with McIlwraith, the so-called "Griffilwraith". The following year his government used the military to break the great shearers' strike, and he earned the nickname "Oily Sam".

Griffith had had a distinguished career in Queensland politics. Included in the legislation for which he was responsible were an offenders' probation act, and an act which codified the law relating to the duties and powers of justices of the peace. He also succeeded in passing an eight hours bill through the assembly which was, however, thrown out by the Queensland Legislative Council.

Griffith as the first Chief Justice

On 13 March 1893, the Governor accepted Griffith's resignation from Vice-President and Member of the Executive Council and Chief Secretary and Attorney General and appointed Griffith to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland where he served until 4 October 1903. He was therefore not a delegate to the 1897 conventions which produced the final draft of the Constitution, but he acted as a behind-the-scenes advisor to Sir Robert Garran, secretary of the Drafting Committee, which followed the structure he had laid out in 1891. In 1899 he campaigned publicly for a 'yes' vote in the federation referendum in Queensland.

During his term as Chief Justice Griffith drafted Queensland's Criminal Code, the first successful codification anywhere of the entire English criminal law, which was adopted in 1899, and later in Western Australia, Papua New Guinea, substantially in Tasmania, and other imperial territories including Nigeria. At May 2006 the Queensland Criminal Code remains largely unchanged.

When the federal Parliament passed the Judiciary Act in 1903, which created the High Court of Australia, Griffith was the natural choice as the first Chief Justice. During his sixteen years on the bench Griffith sat on some 950 reported cases. In 1913 he visited England and sat on the Privy Council. Like Sir Edmund Barton, Griffith was several times consulted by Governors-General of Australia on the exercise of the reserve powers.

Griffith was one of two justices of the High Court of Australia to have previously served in the Parliament of Queensland, along with Charles Powers. He was also one of three justices to have previously served on the Supreme Court of Queensland, along with William Webb and Harry Gibbs.

Headstone of Sir Samuel Griffith at Brisbane's Toowong Cemetery.

After 1910 Griffith's health declined, and in 1917 he suffered a stroke. He retired from the Court in 1919 and died at his home in Brisbane on 9 August 1920. Griffith is buried in Toowong Cemetery, Brisbane, together with his wife, Julia, and their son, Llewellyn. Cemetery records indicate that their plot adjoins that of Griffith's dear friend Charles Mein (1841–1890) (barrister, politician and judge), the pair having met during their undergraduate studies at the University of Sydney.

Griffith is commemorated by the naming of Griffith University, with campuses throughout South East Queensland, the suburb of Griffith in Canberra, the federal electoral division of Griffith, Sir Samuel Griffith Drive on Mount Coot-tha in Brisbane, and the S.W. Griffith building of Brisbane Grammar School, which was the former Mathematics building and is now part of the Harlin House boarding precinct. The Samuel Griffith Society is a conservative organisation dedicated to defending what it sees as the principles of the Constitution – particularly, the principle of states' rights. His portrait, by Richard Godfrey Rivers, hangs in the Brisbane Supreme Court. Griffith was appointed a vice-president of the Royal Colonial Institute in 1909 and an honorary fellow of the British Academy in 1916.

Exterior view of Merthyr House circa 1928

Although demolished in 1963, his home Merthyr, named after his birthplace, gives its name to the neighbourhood of Merthyr in New Farm. Griffith Street and Merthyr Street in New Farm are also named after the man and his house.