Dickson, Sir James Robert (1832–1901) by D. D. Cuthbert
Sir James Dickson was Cyrus Wlliams's father-in-law. Cyrus married Ada, 5th child/3rd daughter of James and Annie Dickson in September 1888.
This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 8, (MUP), 1981
DICKSON, SIR JAMES ROBERT (1832-1901), businessman and premier of Queensland, was born in Plymouth, England on 30 November 1832, the only son of James Dickson and his wife Mary Maria Palmer. He was educated at Glasgow High School, and served as a junior clerk in the City of Glasgow bank before emigrating to Victoria in 1854 and the frontier colony of Queensland in 1862. The young colonist had a natural flair for business, and acquiring considerable wealth as an auctioneer and estate agent in Brisbane he built Toorak House in a magnificent position on the Brisbane River, from where he was able to enjoy what the family firm (in characteristic style) described as “views marvelous in their magnificence” and “a varied panorama of ineffable loveliness and grandeur”.
In spite of these distractions Dickson remained assiduous in his attentions to the world of business and was Chairman of the Brisbane Permanent Building and Banking Company from 1876, foundation Chairman of the Queensland Trustees from 1888, and Chairman of the Royal Bank of Queensland in the crisis year of 1893.
Meanwhile the businessman had gravitated into politics, entering the Legislative Assembly as Liberal member for the prosperous suburb constituency of Enoggera in the general election of 1873. Ministerial office followed rapidly: the Secretaryship for Public Works and Mines May-June 1876, and appropriately enough the Colonial Treasureship from June 1876 to January 1879, and again in the Griffith Ministry from November 1883 to August 1887, where he demonstrated financial expertise during an era of optimism and lavish borrowing, handling the ten million pound loan of 1884. Equally appropriately Dickson resigned in August 1887 after a disagreement with his more radically minded colleagues over their proposals for a land tax and with the ringing pronouncement that he had yet to learn why it should be “a crime to be a freeholder”.
His Bulimba constituents seem to have approved the resignation: his vacation of his assembly seat – to test their judgment – was followed by his victory (by 1373/869) in a keenly contested by-election in September 1887. But his parliamentary base was less secure than this suggested, and after a redistribution of constituencies – and the intervention of a rival Liberal candidate – he was defeated in the Toombul portion of his old electorate in the General Election nine months later. Dickson was to be out of politics for virtually the next four years, during a portion of which time he traveled extensively in Europe.
He returned to politics in the early eighteen nineties, supporting his old chief Griffith in stressing the necessity for resuming the importation of South Sea islanders for labour in the Queensland tropics. Standing on this platform he was elected for the Brisbane suburban constituency of Bulimba in a by-election in April 1892, but his return to ministerial office – and that in the comparatively humble role of Minister for Railways – had to await the formation of the Nelson ministry in February 1897. Thereafter, however, Dickson’s rise was rapid: he became Postmaster General in March 1897, Home Secretary in the Byrnes ministry in March 1898, and Premier (if rather a stopgap Premier) the following September when Byrne died suddenly and Robert Philp proved reluctant to accept a widely supported ministerialists request that he should take office. Alfred Deakin has maintained that when Philp withdrew in Dickson’s favour this was on the tacit understanding that Dickson should go against the Brisbane commercial oriented opposition to Australian federation and become an active exponent of the federal cause. Whatever the truth of this contention, the Dickson ministry is chiefly notable for its successful conduct of the Queensland referendum on the Commonwealth Bill, 2 September 1899. Deakin was to acknowledge Dickson’s “invaluable assistance” in the contest, noting that “his government was by no means unanimous for federation, Parliament distinctly critical, the Assembly about equally divided, the Council emphatically hostile,” and the metropolis as a whole against a measure which appeared a threat to Brisbane’s trade.
Prudently Dickson had seen to the introduction of a provision whereby Queensland might be divided for the purpose of electing members of the Federal Senate, and this prospect – which was naturally attractive to the comparatively sparsely inhabited northern portion of the state – was a factor – if perhaps a minor factor – in solidifying North Queensland’s overwhelming and decisive vote for federation.
The Dickson ministry did not long survive the referendum, but its immediate successor, the Anderson Dawson Labour ministry was immediately dismissed by the Assembly, and Dickson – by temperament a natural adjutant – returned to office as Chief Secretary in Robert Philp’s administration, and as such became a member of the Australian delegation to England in connection with the passage of the Commonwealth Bill through the British Parliament. In England he sided with Joseph Chamberlain in opposing the proposed abolition of the right of appeal from the High Court of Australia to the Privy Council. His stand on this occasion symbolized some major attitudes of his career; the enthusiastic imperialist, whose ministry had seen that Queensland was the first colony to offer troops to vindicate the imperial cause against the Transvaal, disapproved colonial separatism, and the “commercial man” welcomed the British House of Lords as a security for property and business interests in a federation which might move in a radical direction. (It also reflected, as Deakin would have it, the continuing influence of Griffith, still manipulating the affairs of Queensland from the Queensland High Court Bench). In the event Chamberlain, Griffith and Dickson secured only a severely qualified success.
Dickson was 69 at the inauguration of the Commonwealth, and the final stage of his career was of tragic and dramatic brevity: created KCMG in the new years honours of 1901, and appointed Minister of Defence in the first Federal administration, he was taken ill during the inaugural ceremonies in Sydney and died there (on 10 January 1901) after a single week in office. Queensland provided a state funeral for the businessman/politician who had become – if somewhat accidentally – one of its leading federal spokesmen.
Dickson was for many years a prominent layman in the Church of England, particularly as a financial adviser to the diocese of Brisbane. He married twice, first Annie Ely (1838-1880) and, secondly, Mary Mackinlay (1841-1902), who was to be the first Headmistress of the Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School, and was survived by six sons and seven daughters of the first marriage. His second son, Fredrick Dickson (1859-1928) was for many years Crown Prosecutor in Brisbane, and as a Deputy Judge of the Arbitration Court handed down the Dickson award for the sugar industry in 1917.
There are portraits of Dickson in Parliament House, Canberra, and in the Board Room of the B.P.B. and B. Company, and a vivid – if somewhat unflattering – pen portrait in Alfred Deakin’s Federal Story. In company with the “founding fathers” of the Commonwealth Dickson’s name is commemorated in a suburb of the national capital.
C.A. Bernays, Queensland politics during sixty years 1859-1919 (Brisbane, 1919); Alfred Deakin, The Federal Story (new ed., Melbourne, 1963); Brisbane Courier 10 January 1901; 14 January 1901; family information.
written by David Dickson Cuthbert (great grandson of James Dickson. grandson of Cyrus)
Sir James Dickson was Cyrus Wlliams's father-in-law. Cyrus married Ada, 5th child/3rd daughter of James and Annie Dickson in September 1888.
This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 8, (MUP), 1981
DICKSON, SIR JAMES ROBERT (1832-1901), businessman and premier of Queensland, was born in Plymouth, England on 30 November 1832, the only son of James Dickson and his wife Mary Maria Palmer. He was educated at Glasgow High School, and served as a junior clerk in the City of Glasgow bank before emigrating to Victoria in 1854 and the frontier colony of Queensland in 1862. The young colonist had a natural flair for business, and acquiring considerable wealth as an auctioneer and estate agent in Brisbane he built Toorak House in a magnificent position on the Brisbane River, from where he was able to enjoy what the family firm (in characteristic style) described as “views marvelous in their magnificence” and “a varied panorama of ineffable loveliness and grandeur”.
In spite of these distractions Dickson remained assiduous in his attentions to the world of business and was Chairman of the Brisbane Permanent Building and Banking Company from 1876, foundation Chairman of the Queensland Trustees from 1888, and Chairman of the Royal Bank of Queensland in the crisis year of 1893.
Meanwhile the businessman had gravitated into politics, entering the Legislative Assembly as Liberal member for the prosperous suburb constituency of Enoggera in the general election of 1873. Ministerial office followed rapidly: the Secretaryship for Public Works and Mines May-June 1876, and appropriately enough the Colonial Treasureship from June 1876 to January 1879, and again in the Griffith Ministry from November 1883 to August 1887, where he demonstrated financial expertise during an era of optimism and lavish borrowing, handling the ten million pound loan of 1884. Equally appropriately Dickson resigned in August 1887 after a disagreement with his more radically minded colleagues over their proposals for a land tax and with the ringing pronouncement that he had yet to learn why it should be “a crime to be a freeholder”.
His Bulimba constituents seem to have approved the resignation: his vacation of his assembly seat – to test their judgment – was followed by his victory (by 1373/869) in a keenly contested by-election in September 1887. But his parliamentary base was less secure than this suggested, and after a redistribution of constituencies – and the intervention of a rival Liberal candidate – he was defeated in the Toombul portion of his old electorate in the General Election nine months later. Dickson was to be out of politics for virtually the next four years, during a portion of which time he traveled extensively in Europe.
He returned to politics in the early eighteen nineties, supporting his old chief Griffith in stressing the necessity for resuming the importation of South Sea islanders for labour in the Queensland tropics. Standing on this platform he was elected for the Brisbane suburban constituency of Bulimba in a by-election in April 1892, but his return to ministerial office – and that in the comparatively humble role of Minister for Railways – had to await the formation of the Nelson ministry in February 1897. Thereafter, however, Dickson’s rise was rapid: he became Postmaster General in March 1897, Home Secretary in the Byrnes ministry in March 1898, and Premier (if rather a stopgap Premier) the following September when Byrne died suddenly and Robert Philp proved reluctant to accept a widely supported ministerialists request that he should take office. Alfred Deakin has maintained that when Philp withdrew in Dickson’s favour this was on the tacit understanding that Dickson should go against the Brisbane commercial oriented opposition to Australian federation and become an active exponent of the federal cause. Whatever the truth of this contention, the Dickson ministry is chiefly notable for its successful conduct of the Queensland referendum on the Commonwealth Bill, 2 September 1899. Deakin was to acknowledge Dickson’s “invaluable assistance” in the contest, noting that “his government was by no means unanimous for federation, Parliament distinctly critical, the Assembly about equally divided, the Council emphatically hostile,” and the metropolis as a whole against a measure which appeared a threat to Brisbane’s trade.
Prudently Dickson had seen to the introduction of a provision whereby Queensland might be divided for the purpose of electing members of the Federal Senate, and this prospect – which was naturally attractive to the comparatively sparsely inhabited northern portion of the state – was a factor – if perhaps a minor factor – in solidifying North Queensland’s overwhelming and decisive vote for federation.
The Dickson ministry did not long survive the referendum, but its immediate successor, the Anderson Dawson Labour ministry was immediately dismissed by the Assembly, and Dickson – by temperament a natural adjutant – returned to office as Chief Secretary in Robert Philp’s administration, and as such became a member of the Australian delegation to England in connection with the passage of the Commonwealth Bill through the British Parliament. In England he sided with Joseph Chamberlain in opposing the proposed abolition of the right of appeal from the High Court of Australia to the Privy Council. His stand on this occasion symbolized some major attitudes of his career; the enthusiastic imperialist, whose ministry had seen that Queensland was the first colony to offer troops to vindicate the imperial cause against the Transvaal, disapproved colonial separatism, and the “commercial man” welcomed the British House of Lords as a security for property and business interests in a federation which might move in a radical direction. (It also reflected, as Deakin would have it, the continuing influence of Griffith, still manipulating the affairs of Queensland from the Queensland High Court Bench). In the event Chamberlain, Griffith and Dickson secured only a severely qualified success.
Dickson was 69 at the inauguration of the Commonwealth, and the final stage of his career was of tragic and dramatic brevity: created KCMG in the new years honours of 1901, and appointed Minister of Defence in the first Federal administration, he was taken ill during the inaugural ceremonies in Sydney and died there (on 10 January 1901) after a single week in office. Queensland provided a state funeral for the businessman/politician who had become – if somewhat accidentally – one of its leading federal spokesmen.
Dickson was for many years a prominent layman in the Church of England, particularly as a financial adviser to the diocese of Brisbane. He married twice, first Annie Ely (1838-1880) and, secondly, Mary Mackinlay (1841-1902), who was to be the first Headmistress of the Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School, and was survived by six sons and seven daughters of the first marriage. His second son, Fredrick Dickson (1859-1928) was for many years Crown Prosecutor in Brisbane, and as a Deputy Judge of the Arbitration Court handed down the Dickson award for the sugar industry in 1917.
There are portraits of Dickson in Parliament House, Canberra, and in the Board Room of the B.P.B. and B. Company, and a vivid – if somewhat unflattering – pen portrait in Alfred Deakin’s Federal Story. In company with the “founding fathers” of the Commonwealth Dickson’s name is commemorated in a suburb of the national capital.
C.A. Bernays, Queensland politics during sixty years 1859-1919 (Brisbane, 1919); Alfred Deakin, The Federal Story (new ed., Melbourne, 1963); Brisbane Courier 10 January 1901; 14 January 1901; family information.
written by David Dickson Cuthbert (great grandson of James Dickson. grandson of Cyrus)