Catholics and Australian Federation.

First proposals for commemoration of the centenary of Australian Federation included one for re-enactment of the 1 January 1901 procession through the streets of Sydney which had culminated in the Commonwealth inauguration ceremony in Centennial Park. This proposal was eliminated at an early stage of serious planning and the organisers played safe with a parade which was (compared with preceding Olympic Games ceremonies) so unimaginative as to be almost boring, but totally uncontroversial. A restaged 1901 procession might have helped to stimulate serious discussion of the origins and nature of the 'Australia' which had been created that year.

The original procession had at least two features which would, or should, disturb many of the assumptions of 2001 Australians and challenge current superficial versions of Australia's past. First, the original procession was overwhelmingly a celebration of Britishness, of the British Empire and, especially, of the Empire as a military security organisation. (1) Not only was it a predominantly military procession, but most of the soldiers marching and riding had been drawn from famous British and Indian regiments whose colourful uniforms and accoutrements contrasted with the drab khaki of the colonial troops. (2) Second, and more directly relevant to the subject of this paper, the procession and subsequent inauguration ceremony proceeded without official Catholic representation and publicly demonstrated the deep divisions, cultural and social as much as political, which separated the Catholic quarter (27 per cent in New South Wales) from the rest of the population in the colonies federating into the new Commonwealth.

Federated Australia had begun with an official Catholic boycott. Late on the previous day the Catholic archbishop of Sydney, Patrick Francis Cardinal Moran, was informed by the secretary of the governor-general-elect, the seventh Earl of Hopetoun, that first place among religious representatives would be given to the Church of England archbishop of Sydney, William Saumarez Smith; and that only he, the Anglican Primate, would be allowed to read prayers and give blessings in the inauguration ceremonies. This represented a clear break with the procedure established in NSW, whereby precedence among heads of Churches on ceremonial occasions was to he allocated on the basis of length of time in office. (3) This would give first place to Moran, who also claimed special status (not conceded) as a cardinal.

As soon as he was informed of Hopetoun's decision, Moran sent his secretary to see the NSW premier, William Lyne, who was organising the Sydney functions and had originally been Hopetoun's blundering choice to be the first federal prime minister. Lyne's performance in the 1897-98 Federal Convention sessions earned him Alfred Deakin's contempt: 'a crude, sleek, suspicious, blundering, short-sighted backblocks politician'. (4) He had campaigned against Federation before the referenda of 1898 and 1899. Now this man confirmed to Moran's secretary that he had agreed with Hopetoun's plans for 1 January. Moran then informed both Lyne and Hopetoun that for him to participate in the new arrangements would be to connive in the treatment of Catholics as second-class citizens and that, therefore, he would take no part in any of the day's official proceedings. (5)

The Official Boycott

On the morning of I January Cardinal Moran took up a position outside the northern end of St Mary's Cathedral--of which the central section, 'The Cardinal's Tower', had only just been completed--and watched the eight-kilometre long procession go by as it came out of the Domain for a loop through the city before making its way, via Park Street, to Centennial Park. Moran was surrounded by local clergy and visiting Church dignitaries, including Archbishop Carr of Melbourne who had supported the boycott decision. On one side of the assembled clergy was a choir of Catholic school-children who, when the governor-general's coach went by, sang a special Song for the Commonwealth, a setting of Roderic Quinn's poem composed by the Cathedral Director of Music, J. A. Delany. Both choir and song were originally intended for performance in Centennial Park.

Catholics were certainly not totally absent from the parade. There were some among the trade union representatives who constituted its first section, the part furthest from the governor-general's entourage and, therefore, the one with the lowest status. But among government officials there was only one Catholic riding in the ministerial coaches: Richard O'Connor, lawyer and close colleague of Edmund Barton in the campaign for Federation. As will be discussed later, he had been one of only three Catholics elected to the 1897-98 Federal Convention, (6) but was appointed by the Convention to its three-member Constitution-drafting committee. Unlike his fellow NSW delegate Lyne, he scored high marks from Deakin: 'straightforward frankness and absolute sincerity of disposition ... made him one of the most popular delegates', especially when combined with 'the plain logic, well-linked reasonableness and mature reflection of his remarks'. (7) He had been a late, hasty addition to the first federal cabinet of his friend Barton, as Vice-President of the Executive Council (otherwise known as Minister Without Portfolio). After the first federal elections he became an original Senator for NSW and, as leader of the government party in that chamber, had the distinction of moving that the Senate should adjourn for lunch as soon as it had met for the first time in Melbourne in May, because it had no work to do. In 1903 he was given a much more congenial job as one of the three Justices of the first Australian High Court.

Odd as it may seem, the majority of Catholics who participated in the inaugural procession would have been among the British and imperial troops who, according to contemporary descriptions, formed not only the largest but also the most spectacular and most popular part of the parade. Catholics were over-represented in the nineteenth-century British army, and not only among the Irish regiments, of which several famous ones appeared in Sydney. (8)

It was the inclusion in the Sydney parade of a troop from a non-Irish cavalry regiment, the 21st Lancers, that provided a strange link with the non-participating Cardinal Moran. A little more than two years before, one of Moran's cousins, Captain Paul Kenna, had led a squadron of this regiment at the battle of Omdurman, which finally gave Britain control of the Sudan. After fierce fighting, in which Kenna repeatedly rode back into 'hordes of Dervishes' to rescue unhorsed comrades (and in which almost a quarter of the Lancers were killed or wounded), he was awarded the Victoria Cross; and one of the officers he rescued that day (Major W. G. Crole Wyndham) rode through Sydney on 1 January as colonel commanding the whole British contingent. (9) A year before, when Moran had been publicly accused of disloyalty to the Empire because of his criticism of the Boer War, he used the Kenna VC connection as part of his defence. He said he was very concerned about his cousin and about what he called 'other Irish relatives' then fighting in South Africa. (10) This connection is a reminder of how complex, how ambiguous, and how ambivalent were senses of loyalty and identity among the populations of the colonies which had federated in 1901--and a caution against hasty generalisations, whether about 'Irish', 'Catholics', 'Australians' or supporters of empire. (11) 'Australia' was developing as a strange part of the world where, as two distinguished historians have recently emphasised, 'radicalism and imperialism were not necessarily incompatible'. (12)

The influence of sectarianism

The immediate cause of the official Catholic boycott of the inauguration of the Commonwealth may now seem trivial. But the context was the deeply-rooted, pervasive and growing sectarianism of the period, a whole dimension now missing from many recent sanitized versions of Australia's past. As Gavin Souter summed up in his book on the 'initiation' of Australia:

   Although the Catholic Church in Australia had welcomed the coming of
   Federation, its abstention from these national rites was hardly
   surprising. Its very absence could be seen as a way of representing
   the sectarianism which had characterised Australian life throughout
   the 19th century, and would continue to do so during the first two
   decades of the Commonwealth. (13)

Souter's first clause needs significant qualification--offered later in this paper--but he has emphasised an important and divisive feature of the federating colonies. Catholics were (in the chemical metaphor of one of the most articulate, and materially successful, of them) 'like a substance held in suspension, but never quite in solution, and, from the late nineteenth century, increasingly likely to be caught in episodes in which 'they were thrown down in cloudy precipitates'. (14) In the Sydney context, one such episode straddled the Federation celebrations: the Coningham case. Even before the precedence issue was raised, the participation of Catholic bishops was in doubt because of 'the present state of affairs' caused by this case. (15) According to Souter, 'Public interest in this case was almost as great as in Federation'. (16) And his judgement echoes the view prevalent in 1901: 'it is doubtful whether any of the events mentioned [departure of Boer War contingents, Commonwealth celebrations, first federal elections] stirred ... feelings as deeply as did the Coningham Case'. (17)

Arthur Coningham, a former Test cricketer, had petitioned for divorce and, as co-respondent, had cited Cardinal Moran's secretary and Cathedral administrator, Father Denis O'Haran. (18) The first court hearing had ended with jury disagreement and discharge only two weeks before the scheduled Commonwealth inauguration celebration. The case was to resume three months later, and finally ended with the petitioner's defeat and the priest's exoneration. Moran was expressing the general Catholic feeling when he reported to his Roman agent that 'The whole matter is an Orange conspiracy'. (19) The first presiding judge's 'atrocious' (20) remarks about Catholic beliefs and practices (and suitability as servants) were widely reported. Moran suggested to a local bishop that the judge's behaviour was part of 'a long devised attack on the Catholic Church', while rejoicing that 'The Catholic spirit has been wonderfully aroused'. (21) Catholic protest meetings were held all over NSW, with the practical aim of raising money to cover O'Haran's legal costs. Similarly, a Coningham Relief Fund had been organised by militant Protestants led by the Ulster-born Reverend William Dill Macky, a recent NSW Presbyterian Moderator and current president of the Evangelical Council of NSW. When preparing for the new hearing of his case, Coningham is alleged to have said: 'We almost live with Dill Macky'. (22) In June 1901, in the aftermath of Catholic 'victory' in the court case, with Protestant fears deepened by a Catholic campaign to remove the Coronation Oath's condemnation of (Catholic) 'superstitious and idolatorous' practices, Dill Macky founded the Australian Protestant Defence Association, a powerful force in NSW politics for most of the next decade. 'Truly', Richard Broome has suggested, 'the Protestant majority was deeply fearful of the Catholic minority'. (23)

The boycott of the Commonwealth's inauguration and the Catholic fury over the Coningham case need to be placed in a wider context for explanation. Some expressions of a NSW Catholic tribal memory presented these events as the natural culmination of their nineteenth-century experience. In its first editorial after the 1 January 1901 events, the Catholic Press (the more clerically-influenced of the two Sydney Catholic newspapers) proclaimed: 'At the beginning of Australian life, Catholics were persecuted; and it would seem that the state Premier [Lyne] would be pleased to again humiliate us on the day of the Foundation of the Commonwealth'. (24) It was repeating a theme often expressed since its foundation in 1895 that (as in an editorial of 1899) there was 'a conspiracy to keep Catholics out of public life'. (25) Three years before, the situation had been set out in starkly detailed form by Louis Heydon, a son of the 1857-60 Freeman's proprietor and editor J. K. Heydon, a lawyer, a veteran politician (and, very briefly, Minister for Justice in the mid- 1880s), and president of the St Vincent de Paul Society. Heydon had written to Cardinal Moran, emphasising the absence of Catholics from positions of power in the state apparatus, and arguing against passive acceptance of this situation:

   Of the 9 Supreme Court judges, not one is a Catholic. Of the 6
   District Court judges, not one is a Catholic. Of the 10 Ministers of
   the Crown, not one is a Catholic. Of the 9 Under-Secretaries, not
   one is a Catholic. Of the 3 Railway Commissioners, not one is a
   Catholic. Of the 3 Public Service Board members, not one is a
   Catholic. Of the 3 Land and Income Tax Board members, not one is a
   Catholic. Of the 6 Stipendiary Magistrates, not one is a Catholic.

The list with litany-like cadences eventually ended with a summary: 'In short, no office of first, or even second, rate importance is held by a Catholic'. (26)

Socio-economic and related educational factors might explain why there were few Catholics in these positions. But a total absence of Catholics suggests the influence of other factors as well. Relatively few Protestants shared the chiliastic view of Dill Macky that a perceived revival of papal power and pretensions was a sign of the imminence of the Second Coming. (27) But there was a widespread feeling that their beliefs and values, and their conception of a Protestant Empire (their 'Rock of Ages'), under a Protestant Queen, were under increasing threat--with Irish nationalists threatening the unity of the home kingdom itself. This produced deepening distrust of Catholics as subversive of the social and political order by the very fact of expressing their religious beliefs, and therefore unfit for public office. There could be exceptions but such tended to prove the rule, as expressed by the new governor-general when he made a knighthood recommendation for Richard O'Connor, the only Catholic in 'a position of first rate importance' for the inauguration of the Commonwealth in 1901. Lord Hopetoun emphasised to Joseph Chamberlain, the British Secretary of State for the Colonies, that O'Connor was a special case: 'He is a loyal Catholic and a loyal Irishman ... [and] there are precious few of these in Australia'. (28) At the beginning of federated Australia the view from the top of the new power structure was that a 'loyal' Catholic was a rarity.

Sectarianism as such is not my main concern here. But this is an appropriate occasion to regret the absence of any major scholarly study of the rise, dominance, decline and fall of sectarianism in the history of Australia--a study of its social and cultural, as much as political, impact. (29) Even more, it is the right occasion to deplore the way that a whole dimension of Australia's past has been almost totally excluded from even the best of recent scholarly work--such as it is--on the history of Australian Federation. The journalist Gavin Souter has supplied at least some of that dimension which the academic historians choose to ignore.

A Catholic Church welcome?

However, Souter's assertion, quoted above, that the Australian Catholic Church had welcomed the coming of Federation (30) needs major qualification. Souter too easily assumed that the attitudes and activities of the Cardinal-Archbishop of Sydney represented those of the whole Australian Church--which, in a sense, had itself been federated since its First Plenary Council of 1885. The Catholic Church's hierarchical structure encouraged that assumption. But even at the top of that structure, in the cases of the senior bishops, a survey shows significant exceptions. As the move towards Federation became practical politics in the late 1890s the two fence-sitting colonies were Queensland and Western Australia; and the senior Catholic bishop in each was strongly opposed to the Federation cause.

Archbishop Robert Dunne of Brisbane had been a longtime critic of Federation as being 'premature, costly and of doubtful benefit', (31) and, unlike Moran, showed no understanding of the seriousness of defence concerns. He thought the imperial government should intervene to put an end to the Federation foolishness, and he rejected official invitations to attend 1901 celebrations in Sydney and Melbourne. Earlier, when Queensland delegates took an active part in the 1890 and 1891 Federation meetings, one of the leaders was a Catholic, John Murtagh Macrossan, 'by far its [Federation's] strongest public supporter in the colony'. (32) Dunne considered that Macrossan was wasting his time and money (always an important consideration for the Scrooge-like Dunne)--and his life, when he collapsed and died during the National Australasian Convention in 1891--in a worthless cause. (32) Another Catholic, A. J. Thynne, had been part of a strong Queensland federationist team, but Thynne's political career was eclipsed by that of T. J. Byrnes, 'the epitome of the working-class Catholic youth who through brains and hard work rose quickly to the top in law and politics'. (33) Byrnes favoured a loose confederation of the colonies and tried to provide a rival model against that finally adopted in 1899. He 'played a waiting game' (34) but then, in September 1898 just short of his thirty-eighth birthday, died suddenly from measles complications. Two very senior Australian historians have recently suggested that, if Byrnes had continued as premier of Queensland, he 'would probably have kept his colony out of Federation, at any rate until well after 1901'. (36) They also suggest that the absence of Byrnes' (and, one might add, Dunne's) Queensland from the decision-making of 1897-98 was providential, because a Queensland alliance with the smaller colonies to strengthen the powers of a federal senate would have produced a constitution almost certainly unacceptable to NSW. (37)

In 1899 Queensland voters accepted the Commonwealth Bill with even less enthusiasm than those of NSW. Brisbane voted strongly against the Bill; most of the south also voted 'No'; and the issue was decided by a nearly four-to-one 'Yes' vote in the north (the dead Macrossan's adopted homeland) and a nearly two-to-one 'Yes' vote in the centre. (38) In the latter area, a glaring exception was Rockhampton, which combined the second highest voter turnout in the colony with a very high 'No' vote. (39) Ironically, the local bishop, Joseph Higgins (a former auxiliary bishop to Moran in Sydney), was the only Catholic bishop in Queensland who was a strong active advocate of a 'Yes' vote! The Rockhampton outcome demonstrated the importance of regional factors in voting for and against Federation. These factors also help to explain why some parts of the Darling Downs voted 'Yes' when most of the south voted 'No'. In Warwick the 'Yes' campaign was actively supported by the local Catholic priest, James Horan, who was a member of the district's Federation League's committee (which also included the local Anglican and Presbyterian clergymen). (40) In Brisbane and suburbs 10, 170 adult males voted 'No' and only 5,765 voted 'Yes'. (41) In this context, Dunne appears more as symptom than cause. His Anglican counterpart, Bishop Webber, was a lonely figure in his support for Federation. One of Brisbane's two Catholic newspapers, the Australian, did provide support for the Commonwealth Bill but the other, the Age, remained, in the view of its Sydney contemporary, 'provincial' in its attitudes. (42)

As discussed later in this paper, it is not possible to determine whether Catholics voted for or against Federation in the 1899 referendum--or, almost more important, whether they bothered to vote at all. In Queensland the outcome was decided by a margin of 6,202 votes; and in that colony there was a huge gap between potential and actual political participants. It has been estimated that between forty and fifty thousand eligible voters (that is, adult white males) were not on the electoral rolls. (42) Most of these belonged to the same lower and marginal classes out of which, at the 1885 Plenary Council, Archbishop Dunne had shown so much interest in elevating Catholics. (44)

In Western Australia, the other colony that stood aloof from federating moves in 1895-99, the senior Catholic bishop was also critical of the proposed Commonwealth, although not as deeply entrenched in opposition as Dunne was. Matthew Gibney, a septuagenarian veteran of almost forty years' service in the colony as priest and bishop, had first commented to Moran on how widely the Cardinal's pro-Federation statements were reported in the western colony while, tactfully, not saying what his own views were. (45) But when the Perth government, facing isolation from a new 'Australia', was pressured to hold a referendum in July 1900, Gibney argued strongly in favour of rejecting union with the new Commonwealth as harmful to local interests. (46) As in Queensland, regional, rather than religious, interests were reflected in the voting patterns. The Coolgardie-Kalgoorlie goldfields were the most dynamic new region and, by the mid-1890s, they were occupied by more than one-third of the colony's population. Most of these people were migrants from the eastern colonies who became increasingly critical of neglect by Perth and threatened 'separation' in order to join in Federation. A local Catholic priest, Father Ambrose O'Gorman, became an active member of the Goldfields Reform League and, in 1899, was nominated as a local representative to carry Goldfields views to the Colonial Office. (47) But the most important individual in Goldfields agitation and support for Federation was John Kirwan, also a Catholic. From 1895 he was editor and part-owner of the only local daily newspaper, the Kalgoorlie Miner and 'played a key part in the Western Australian Federation movement'. (48) In the referendum (in which, as in South Australia, women were eligible to vote) Western Australians voted in favour of joining the Commonwealth by a margin of more than two-to-one. The Goldfields voted overwhelmingly 'Yes' and 'the weight of numbers there was responsible for the size of the majority, the proportion of 'Yes' votes to those qualified to vote being higher than anywhere else except Victoria'. (49)

In the South Australian 'paradise of dissent' Catholics were, relatively, less numerous (just under 15 per cent) and less prominent than in the other colonies. But Archbishop John O'Reily of Adelaide endorsed Federation as enthusiastically as his Anglican counterpart, and was probably even more earnest in his desire to see the new entity firmly embedded in the British Empire. His enthusiasm for Empire bordered on the 'Chamberlainism' that was becoming a bete noir for Moran. The Adelaide Council of Churches' organisation of a Federation Sunday before the 1898 referendum had O'Reily's full support. (50) The result was a two-to-one 'Yes' majority. South Australia then became one of the colonies forced into a second referendum in 1899 because the 1898 NSW vote had failed to produce the required majority total; and the second referendum almost doubled the 'Yes' vote, with close to a four-to-one margin. (51)

South Australia had provided a secure and congenial base for the political career of Federation stalwart Patrick McMahon Glynn. He was one of only three Catholics among the fifty delegates who attended the first session of the Federal Convention in Adelaide in 1897. (52) NSW and Tasmania elected the other two: respectively, Richard O'Connor ('one lone Catholic ... in a sea of Protestants' (53)) and Matthew Clarke. O'Connor was a 'native' (in colonial language usage), but both Clarke and Glynn were Irish migrants who, by an extraordinary coincidence, had been educated in the same Dublin school, Blackrock College. (54)

Glynn is popularly remembered, if remembered at all, as the man who put God into the Australian Constitution or, at least, the phrase 'Humbly relying upon the blessing of Almighty God'. At Adelaide the Convention had received forty petitions for constitutional recognition of a divine source for law and authority. The largest group of signatures came from the Presbyterian Church: 12,700, compared with 11,723 from the Church of England. (55) It may seem strange that a total of fifty-one formal petitions included only one from the Catholic Church, representing three signatures in a total of 36,434, (56) and prepared in Adelaide by Archbishop O'Reily. But there was a deliberate low-key Catholic response in the aftermath of the 'sectarian shindy' that had accompanied the Convention elections in NSW earlier in the year; and there was concern about how a 'God' clause might be used by Protestants against Catholics. Glynn had first tried to amend the Preamble during the Adelaide session and had been defeated by a coalition led by the conservative Edmund Barton and the radical Henry Bourne Higgins. (57) At the last Convention session in Melbourne, with strong outside support from Victorian churches (especially from Presbyterians) he tried again and succeeded:

   The inclusion of God in the Preamble was ultimately the result of
   public pressure prevailing over political will ... The need to
   ensure church support for Federation was one of the key factors
   which led politically pragmatic secularists to finally accept the
   amendment. It was becoming clearer that without a reference to God
   in the Preamble, the public might reject the Federation Bill
   completely. (58)

But what is less often noted about Glynn's interest in 'God' is how quickly he then turned to support Higgins' attempt to neutralise the dangers Higgins perceived in the amended Preamble. When a weary Barton seemed to have 'lost the plot', Glynn helped Higgins insert Section 116 which provided, as it still provides, that the Commonwealth could not legislate to establish any religion, to impose any religious observance, to prohibit free exercise of any religion, or to impose any religious test for holding Commonwealth office. (59)

Tasmania supported the Commonwealth Bill in the referendum of 1898, and again in 1899. The second was carried by a margin of seventeen-to-one, but with a very low turnout of voters. (60) Churchmen were not prominent in Federation debates, on either side. The octogenarian Hobart Catholic archbishop, Daniel Murphy, was long past public activity or potential leadership. His new coadjutor, the scholarly and very able Patrick Delany, although strongly supportive of Cardinal Moran's position, found his energies absorbed by specifically Church problems. But the electors of Tasmania had sent a Catholic layman (with eight Anglicans and a Congregationalist) to the Federal Convention, where Matthew Clarke, aged thirty-four, narrowly missed the distinction of being the youngest person present. The same historian who considered Clarke 'had little to contribute to the Convention', at least recognised that he was 'an able platform advocate of Federation' in his home territory. (61) This was in the north of Tasmania, where the 'No' vote was much lower than in the south. (62) While different newspaper attitudes in Hobart and Launceston have been used to explain this situation, some allowance should be made for the effects of the vigorous campaigning of the 'Northern Broguey Man'. (63)

Federation without Tasmania or South Australia is conceivable--even more, without Queensland and, certainly, without Western Australia. But there would have been no Commonwealth without the inclusion of both Victoria and NSW. Yet the attitudes and voting behaviour of the citizens of these two colonies in the 1890s presents a stark contrast. The Federation issue produced deep divisions in the Mother Colony, and such low support in the first referendum that the other colonies were forced to amend the Commonwealth Bill to make it more attractive (or less repellant) and then subject themselves to another round of voting. But in Victoria, by the 1890s, 'it was rare to find a ... public speaker unwilling to endorse Federation as a general good' . (64) In the first referendum Victoria produced an 82 per cent 'Yes' vote (compared with an average of 69 per cent across the colonies voting)--though less than half the eligible voters turned out. In the second referendum Victoria registered a 'spectacularly large' 94 per cent 'Yes' vote, and a majority turnout, to become the only colony in which a majority of eligible voters actually showed their support for the creation of a new 'Australia'. (65)

Church leadership on the Federation issue had not been prominent in the colony which produced the distinctive grassroots organisation pushing for Federation, the Australian Natives Association. In these circumstances, it hardly seemed necessary. The Catholic archbishop of Melbourne, Thomas Cart, had not been an active supporter of Federation but, when it happened, 'he welcomed it'. A visit to the United States in 1899 'convinced him that the colonies' separate existence was an unnatural situation'; (66) and, in the year of its achievement, he said that 'Australian Federation would cement the country in union with the Motherland in one great nation'. (67) Until the eve of Federation it had been of no particular interest to him since his arrival in the colonies three years after Moran. When, at the beginning of 1897, non-politician candidates for the Convention were under discussion, the contrast with Cardinal Moran's position was underlined by Bishop Higgins' tart observation that it was unlikely that Carr would be nominated because he had 'not ... given any proof of his political orthodoxy on this question'. (68)

As already emphasised, belief that Federation would serve their interests, material or otherwise, was so strong among Victorians that a Victorian equivalent of Cardinal Moran was not needed. But what remains unclear is whether Catholics were overrepresented--for socio-economic and educational rather than religious reasons--among not so much the small minority of 'No' voters but the still very large minority who did not vote at all, even in Victoria. For statistically-minded historians it is particularly irritating that Victoria, the colony where the result was least in doubt, was the only one which preserved the names of voters. Name, address and occupation were recorded for 161,925 people; but not the way they voted--and not their religion. Even with sampling, it would take a massive research effort to identify the religion of 'Yes' voters. With non-compulsory voting, all sorts of psephological problems bedevil attempts to correlate above-average 'Yes' or 'No' votes with above-average Catholic population per electoral division in any colony.

The only serious scholarly attempt to use the unique Victorian material (in the library of the parliament of Victoria) seems to be that of Dawn Peel, in her study of the Western District electorate of Polwarth. (69) In the final 1899 referendum an area centred on Colac registered a 'Yes' vote and a turnout much higher than the colonies-wide average but much lower than in other parts of Victoria. Using local records and newspapers, Peel tried to identify 'No' voters and establish the issues which influenced their votes. In this regard, she has questioned the dominance of economic interests (so often emphasised in explanations of Federation), stressed the influence of personalities and religion, pointed to the relative absence of labourers and unskilled workers among the voters, and concluded that 'Federation was largely a middle-class movement'. (71) Though the area was said to be 'noted for the lack of sectarianism', (69) public life was largely dominated by Presbyterians and Methodists, and the two candidates jockeying for control of the local parliamentary seat in the 1890s were a Scots Presbyterian and an Irish Catholic, the former a Free Trader and the latter a Protectionist. Despite the latter's formal economic policy, he was a strong advocate of a 'No' vote in both 1898 and 1899. He had lost the local election a year before. In the local newspaper of this Catholic politician's home town the Anglican minister advocated a 'Yes' vote and the Irish-born Catholic priest advocated a 'No' vote. Of 'No' voters whom Peel could identify, 'few were Protestants'. The Catholic priest himself did not vote in 1899. (72)

The relevance of Peel's Polwarth (especially its Cororooke sub-division) might be questioned as a guide for explaining even the situation in other parts of Victoria, let alone in NSW, however much an historian might regret the absence across the border of an equivalent of the precious Victorian voting lists. Dealing with an era before compulsory voting or opinion polls or voter surveys, there are even less technical means in NSW for assessing Catholic support for Federation than there are in the case of Victoria. Yet NSW was the colony where the degree of support for Federation would determine whether or not a new Commonwealth would come into existence in 1901. In the final 1899 referendum 107,420 NSW adult males voted in favour of Federation and 82,741 voted against. (73) The people of Sydney voted, narrowly, 'No' as they had the previous year, but 'In the country Yes scored 60 per cent, which gave Yes 56 per cent overall'. (74) As already emphasised, there is no possible way of measuring the Catholic component of not only the 'Yes' and 'No' totals but also of the non-voting remnant. (75) A feature of the NSW situation which does provide a contrast with the other colonies, and merits attention, is the large number of Catholics who were publicly active on both sides of the Federation argument during the 1890s.

Cardinal Moran as advocate

By far the most important of these Catholics was Cardinal Moran himself. Twenty-five years ago Richard Ely suggested that 'the eventual success of the Federation movement probably owed more to Moran than to any other church leader', and that by the time of the second NSW referendum Moran's help 'possibly was indispensable' for the victory of the 'Yes' campaign'. (74) I have recently, tentatively, advanced the view that Moran did more to achieve Federation than any other individual, from church or state. (77) His advocacy of union began as soon as he arrived in 1884, and it was an advocacy based on a conception of one 'Australia', even one 'Australasia', that he had developed long before his arrival. Among public figures (compared, for example, with the delegates who went to the Adelaide Convention in 1897) he was unusually well-travelled, and as he travelled all over the colonies he repeated a consistent message, as at a Sydney school prize-giving in 1896: they should look and think beyond and above colonial boundaries, 'no matter what local interests might seem to be impaired', and the reward from union would be increased 'one-thousand-fold in strength, security, prosperity and peace'. (78) Unity for defence was his most regular call, the one to which audiences and readers were most receptive, and the one which gave him most common ground with colonial 'nationalists'--even though, for Moran himself, this was combined with a deeply personal goal totally at odds with the aspirations of most of the colonies' population, Catholics and non-Catholics: that Australia should be the base for the Christianisation of Asia. (79)

On literally hundreds of occasions in the twenty years before its achievement, Moran spoke of the need for Federation, occasionally in a formal address but mostly in a few extempore remarks in short speeches at almost weekly parish functions. By the 1890s he was regularly followed to his Sunday afternoon engagements by journalists eager for 'grabs' on contemporary issues. He attracted special Australia-wide attention after a 1894 newspaper interview on the urgency of the need for Federation (subsequently republished in pamphlet form) (80) which, a young B. R. Wise enthused, 'sound[ed] through the din of electioneering like the deep note of a cathedral bell' (81) and Barton considered would 'give a great lift to the movement'. (82) As an old Sir Henry Parkes conceded to Wise, 'They [Moran's calls for Federation] reach thousands we can never hope to reach'. (83) Because of his 'brilliant expositions of federal principles', (84) Moran was invited to be the keynote speaker at the second of the two 'People's Conventions', held at Bathurst in 1896, which formalised the procedure for direct elections to a special constitution-drafting Convention. Misled by his Bathurst success, he himself accepted nomination for these elections in 1897 and was defeated by a very well organised 'Stop the Cardinal' campaign in what became 'a good old sectarian shindy'. (85) Even this, I have argued, (86) made a significant contribution to advancing the Federation cause by involving large numbers of people who had previously considered it irrelevant--the 'botheration' or' faderation' of contemporary jokes.

Having 'made Federation a burning political process' (87) but suffered personally in the process, Moran was reluctant to become directly involved in the 1898 referendum campaign, despite pleas from federationists. He did indicate to inquirers that he thought the 1898 Bill should be accepted, despite its faults, because 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'. (88) However, he was as dismayed as other Federation enthusiasts by the NSW result and became publicly vocal again, both in newspaper interviews and on the parish function circuit, stressing external threats to the disunited colonies in an increasingly dangerous world. (89) He then played a vital role in the second, 1899, referendum (where the margin of victory of NSW was so narrow), not least because he was in direct conflict with prominent Catholic laymen who led the 'No' campaign.

Mixed voices in Sydney

In his 1894 interview Moran had claimed that all the bishops and 'the great majority' of the Catholic clergy supported Federation. This was said in a NSW context in which none of the six country bishops in his ecclesiastical province had voiced opposition, but where really only his Sydney auxiliary bishop, Higgins, was enthusiastic in his support. Notably, no mention was made of the attitudes of all those Catholics who happened not to be in holy orders. But as soon as Federation became a serious issue in the mid-1890s, Catholics became prominent on both sides of the public argument. When an Anti-Convention Bill League was established in NSW before the 1898 referendum, two veteran lawyer-politicians, well-known Catholics, became leaders: Tom Slattery and Louis Heydon--the same Heydon who had urged Moran to take action against exclusion of Catholics from public office. Slattery had been a minister in Protectionist governments in 1891-95 and, earlier, often acted for the Church in legal matters, and had been an important adviser to Moran in the 1897 Convention elections. (90) His law firm acted for O'Haran in the Coningham case and, as leading defence counsel, briefed Jack Want QC who, though not a Catholic, frequently took Slattery briefs in cases involving Church interests. Want had resigned as Attorney-General in 1899 in order to devote his energies to the 'No' cause. The Catholic Press editor, J. Tighe Ryan, alleged that Slattery was the real 'stage manager' of the 'No' campaign and added, enigmatically, that he was a 'renowned expert in the mysteries of underground regions'. (91)

Heydon, a sometime legal partner of Slattery, was already prominent in the 'Patriotic' cause (that is, the cause of those who believed NSW, not 'Australia', was their patria, their homeland) when he published his 1897 pamphlet Prudence in Federation, which attempted to demonstrate that Federation was a plot to effectively dismember NSW in the interests of its neighbours. (92) In the 1899 campaign he was joined on 'No' platforms by his barrister brother, Charles. Although the Heydons were native-born of English origin, Louis Heydon was one of the leading 'No' campaigners who tried to exploit Irish fears by arguing that Federation would deprive their NSW homeland of 'Home Rule' and that, therefore, no one who wanted Home Rule for Ireland could vote 'Yes'--an argument effectively countered by Moran himself among others.(93) Another active and important (not least because of his wealth) 'No' campaigner was the brewer and Legislative Council member, John Toohey. With his recently deceased brother, James, he had been a prominent supporter of both colonial Irish organisations and fund-raising for the Irish parliamentary party. Like Slattery, Toohey had been born in Ireland but had arrived while still a small child. On the other side of the Federation debate were Catholics with similar origins, such as the life insurance pioneer and politician J. P. Garvan, the merchant and pastoralist James Dalton (the elder of the Dalton Brothers partnership), and the journalist Tighe Ryan (the latter two having arrived in early teens rather than infancy), who were all active supporters of Irish organisations. This is not the place to discuss what being or feeling 'Irish' meant in the federating colonies, where by 1901 only just under 5 per cent of the population was Irish-born. (94) The subject of this dual identity has been magisterially explored by Patrick O'Farrell's The Irish in Australia. (95) But Tighe Ryan's claim that 'almost every Irishman [in Sydney] supported it [the 1899 Bill]' (96) includes a large element of journalist's rhetoric, especially as he conflates Irish with Catholic.

The federationist group in Sydney included a prime example of a colonial-born 'Irishman', Francis Bede Freehill. A lawyer, a life insurance pioneer (with Garvan), a sponsor of visits by Irish parliamentary party delegates, an organiser of the (NSW) Irish Volunteer Rifles, and a foundation director of the Catholic Press, Freehill was a member of the executive of the NSW branch of the Australasian Federation League from its establishment in 1893. He was very active in coordinating the work of the NSW and Victorian committees in the 1899 campaign. Other publicly prominent Catholics active in the federationist cause in 1898-99, and colonial-born of Irish origin, were the businessman and former Mayor of Sydney, Sir William Manning, and the lawyer and future Lord Mayor, Thomas Hughes--who, as secretary-adviser, accompanied premier George Reid to the so-called 'secret' premiers' meeting in Melbourne in January-February 1899, which settled the form of the Constitution which would be put up for popular approval, or rejection, in the second referendum.

Differences in Catholic attitudes to Federation were reflected in different treatments of the issues involved by the two Sydney Catholic weekly newspapers, the long-established and lay-controlled Freeman's Journal and the relatively new and clergy-dominated Catholic Press. From 1897 the latter was edited by Tighe Ryan, one of the ablest journalists in the colonies and a tireless advocate of Federation throughout the 1890s. He had close links with Barton and Wise and corresponded with Deakin. (Interestingly, he was less friendly with his fellow-Catholic Federation enthusiast, Richard O'Connor, whom he considered insufficiently active in Irish causes.) Ryan had been the organiser of the 1894 Daily Telegraph interview with Cardinal Moran which had given Moran increased prominence as a Federation advocate. Ryan's special role in the referenda campaigns was to try and counter the 'wobbling' of the rival Freeman's. (97)

Before the late 1890s the Freeman's had not taken Federation seriously. Even in the last stage, before grudgingly supporting a 'Yes' vote, it raised Catholic fears of a sectarian Senate by comparing the voting system with that which had excluded Moran from the 1897 Convention. Its editor during both 1898 and 1899 was a veteran politician (whose ministerial career was still ahead of him), E. W. O'Sullivan. With an upper Riverina electorate adjoining that of Louis Heydon, O'Sullivan founded the Land and Industrial Alliance with him and in the 1880s joined him in some common radical projects. But O'Sullivan had much wider horizons than Heydon, and retained radical impulses which had not survived in Heydon. O'Sullivan had first been a republican, and was a relatively late convert to the form of federation adopted in 1899. In the late 1890s he was in regular contact with Moran and, sharing Moran's keen interest in defence issues, may have been influenced by Moran's pragmatic arguments for accepting the 1899 compromise with all its imperfections. (98)

One Catholic who performed a particularly valuable service for the Federation cause in 1898 was colonial-born (and St Stanislaus College-educated) Frank Clarke. When Barton attempted to galvanise NSW support for Federation by challenging 'Yes-No' premier Reid in his own electorate in the 1898 NSW general elections, and lost, Clarke restored his parliamentary platform. He resigned his own safe north coast seat and allowed Barton to successfully contest the by-election--which developed a sectarian aspect, with Catholics supporting Barton against a 'wowser' challenger. (99)

It is comparatively easy to discover the attitudes to Federation of Catholics such as Slattery, Heydon, O'Sullivan and O'Connor who happened to be politicians, and of the few wealthy Catholics such as the Tooheys, the Daltons, the Garvans and the Hugheses whose social position attracted publicity. However, as mentioned so often in this paper, there is no way of definitely establishing how the overwhelming majority of Catholics voted, or whether they voted at all. This was a generation before clear observable alignments of Catholics with the growing Labor movement. It was not until the fierce sectarian conflicts of the Federation year that Cardinal Moran himself gave such an alignment his blessing with a public statement that 'the only party that at present appears to be above religious prejudice is the Labor Party'. (100) When a unified Labor party first became a permanent feature of the NSW parliament it had only one Catholic among its eighteen members. Most NSW Labor members strongly opposed Federation and campaigned for a 'No' vote in both 1898 and 1899, sharing platforms with the Heydons and Slattery, who had earlier acted as solicitor for the NSW Trades and Labor Council. Labor leaders claimed that Federation would consolidate existing inequalities and was a diversion from serious social reform, and they emphasised the undemocratic features of the proposed federal Constitution.

In the 1897 Federal Convention election campaigning one Catholic can be identified among the Political Labor League members supporting the election of an exclusive 'Labor Ten' ticket, as he repeated a popular slogan: 'Federation is botheration'. This was Peter McGarry. (101) He left his mark on the record again in 1899 when a special Labor conference was called to discipline two parliamentarians who had broken ranks and campaigned for a 'Yes' vote. McGarry helped to produce a compromise that avoided expulsions and marked the Labor shift towards acceptance of Federation. (102) The same McGarry was elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly in 1904, and then in 1911 was persuaded by Cardinal Moran not to resign from the Labor Party and bring down the precariously-situated first NSW Labor government. On that occasion Moran had noted that 'very few words sufficed to set him right'. (103) Unfortunately, there is no evidence to assess whether Moran's words in the 1890s helped to 'set right' people such as McGarry as far as Federation was concerned.

When I was preparing this paper I occasionally wondered whether my focus was too narrow, too selective, too concerned with demonstrating the significance of Catholics in the creation of the Australian Commonwealth. But then I read John Hirst's newly published The Sentimental Nation: The Making of the Australian Commonwealth, (104) a book produced with the support of the National Council for the Centenary of Federation, and my reservations about emphasising the role of Catholics disappeared.

While the book is one of the few publications of the Centenary period to seriously tackle important issues in explaining why Federation occurred when it did, it contains some very odd passages--notably, in the penultimate paragraph of the first chapter:

   It was the civic nationalism, now lost to sight, that inspired
   the federation movement. It was dignified, earnest, Protestant, not
   raffish, Irish-Catholic or working-class. (105)

Perhaps Dr Hirst is inviting us to share a joke ('Goak'?). Perhaps not. Obiter dicta in other places suggest the latter. The concept of Protestant civic nationalism was fashionable in America a generation ago, but it is of questionable value in explaining Australian Federation and it has not been used systematically in this book. In its context, the effect of the passage is gratuitously exclusionary. Was Richard O'Connor, drafter of the Constitution, 'raffish'--vulgar, dissolute, flashy, tawdry? Were Freehill, Garvan, Manning, Dalton, Ryan or Hughes not 'dignified', or 'earnest' enough? No Toby Tosspots there! Were Glynn's admiration for American alcohol restrictions, respect for Lord Milner and devotion to daily bathing elaborate attempts to conceal raffish Irish-Catholic origins? ('Goak'--as A. J. P. Taylor used to say/write.) Are McGarry and friends to be excluded on all counts? Is all Cardinal Moran's work to achieve Federation to be dismissed as part of a raffish, Irish-Catholic working-class 'Other'?

It is a long time since Catholics were denied a place in Australia's present. But it seems that some academic historians are still reluctant to concede them a place in Australia's past.

(1) The Britishness of 1901 events, that 'the nation was formed not against the empire but within it', is emphasised in John Hirst, The Sentimental Nation: The Making of the Australian Commonwealth, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2000, p.342. The Britishness of subsequent developments, of Australians never rejecting Britain but being rejected by it, has been emphasised by Neville Meaney, 'Britishness and Australian identity: the problem of nationalism in Australian history and historiography', Australian Historical Studies, vol.32, no. 116, April 2001, pp.76-90, and following symposium.

(2) Detailed descriptions of the troops, and procession generally, Sydney Morning Herald [SMH], 2 January 1901.

(3) Lord Jersey memorandum, 11 May 1892; Moran to Jersey, 13 May 1892, Jersey Papers, National Library of Australia, Canberra. Jersey did not accept Moran's military analogy in which he compared bishops with generals and cardinals with field marshals.

(4) Alfred Deakin, The Federal Story: The Inner History of the Federal Cause, 1880 1900 (1944), 2nd edn, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1963, p.66.

(5) Moran's account in diary entry for 31 December 1900, Moran Diary 1901, Moran Papers, Sydney Catholic Archdiocesan Archives [SCAA].

(6) O'Connor was elected as a member of 'The Federal Ten', the winning ticket in NSW, with one exception. The ticket was selected by a meeting 'representing all the Protestant Churches' to defeat Cardinal Moran. (Statement on 'Federal Ten' how-to-vote slip, copy in Spruson collection, Eris O'Brien Papers, formerly at St Patrick's College, Manly.) The Rev. George McInnes, chairman of the 'United Protestant' meeting, stressed that they should have a token Catholic on their ticket to show that they were not against loyal Catholic fellow citizens but only opposed to Moran as 'the sworn servant of a foreign despotism'. SMH, 23 February 1897.

(7) Deakin, Federal Story, p.65,

(8) H.J. Hanham,' 'Religion and nationality in the mid-Victorian army ', in M. R. D. Foot (ed.), War and Society: ... Historical Essays, Paul Elek, London; army religious statistics, 1861-1913, in Appendix 11, pp. 179-81.

(9) Richard Dohetry and David Truesdale, Irish Winners of the Victoria Cross, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2000, pp.89, 90, 214. Kanna later commanded 21st Lancers, was awarded the DSO and was twice MID for service in the Boer War and, as a major-general, was killed in action at Gallipoli in 1915.

(10) Moran interview, Daily Telegraph [DT], 27 December 1899.

(11) On the Irish and Empire, see Keith Jeffery (ed.), 'An Irish Empire' ? Aspects of Ireland and the British Empire, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1996, and especially Jeffery's own 'The Irish military tradition and the British Empire', pp.94-122. Kenna VC had Irish parents but was born in Liverpool and educated at the exclusive English Jesuit school, Stonyhurst. Doherty and Truesdale, Irish Winners, pp.89, 214.

(12) Geoffrey Bolton and Duncan Waterson, 'Queensland', in Helen Irving (ed.), The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, Cambridge University-Press, Cambridge, 1999, p.110.

(13) Gavin Souter, Lion and Kangaroo: The Initiation of Australia, 1901-1919, Collins, Sydney, 1976, p.41. Reprinted for the Centenary by Text, Melbourne.

(14) Herbert Moran, Viewless Winds: Being the Recollections and Digressions of an Australian Surgeon, Peter Davies, London, 1939, p.22. Unrelated to the Cardinal, he was a Sydney-born son of Irish migrants who prospered and was keenly aware this made him unusual: he captained the first (1908) Wallaby rugby touring team. See G. P. Walsh, 'Herbert Michael Moran', Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 10, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1986, pp.576-77.

(15) Archbishop T. Carr to Moran, 16 December 1900, SCAA.

(16) Souter, Lion and Kangaroo, p.43.

(17) 'Zero' [Dan Green], The Secret History of the Coningham Case, Finn Brothers, Sydney, 1901, p.8.

(18) The subject and context await good scholarly treatment. A reliable outline is provided by Bede Nairn, 'Arthur Coningham' and 'W. P. Crick', Australian Dictionary of Biography [ADB], vol.8, 1981, pp.85-6, 150-52, and Mark Lyons, 'Daniel Cooper Green', ADB, vol.9, 1983, pp.91-2. In the absence of a comprehensive scholarly study the most readable brief introduction remains Cyril Pearl, Wild Men of Sydney, W. H. Allen & Co., London, 1958, ch. 9.

(19) Moran to Mgr M. Kelly, 13 November 1900, Irish College Archives, Rome (ICA).

(20) Moran to Kelly, 7 January 1901, ICA.

(21) Moran to Bishop James Murray (and Coadjutor Bishop P. V. Dwyer), 21 December 1900, Maitland Diocesan Archives.

(22) 'Zero', Secret History, p.67.

(23) Richard Broome, Treasure in Earthen Vessels: Protestant Christianity in New South Wales Society, 1900-1914, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1980, p. 104; and see, generally, ch. 6, 'Sectarian uproar, 1895-1904'.

(24) Catholic Press (CP), 5 January 1901. One NSW minister claimed that Lyne's decision did not have cabinet approval. Freeman's Journal (F J), 12 January 1901.

(25) CP, 15 April 1899.

(26) L. F. Heydon to Moran, 4 November 1896, SCAA.

(27) Richard Broome, 'William Marcus Dill Macky', ADB, vol. 8, 1981, p.306.

(28) Lord Hopetoun to Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, 25 June 1902, Chamberlain Papers, University of Birmingham, UK. O'Connor never received the award. He asked Hopetoun to withdraw the recommendation because, before he had the financial security of a High Court position, he feared he would become bankrupt.

(29) In the current bleak historiographical situation, it is very encouraging to know that sectarianism will be the subject of the next book of Emeritus professor Patrick O'Farrell.

(30) Souter, Lion and Kangaroo, p.41.

(31) Neil J. Byrne Robert Dunne, 1830-197, Archbishop of Brisbane, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1991, pp.205-206.

(32) Duncan Waterson, 'The absentees from north of the Tweed', New Federalist: The Journal of Federation History, no. 1, June 1998, p.29.

(33) Byrne, Dunne, p.206.

(34) Geoffrey Bolton and Duncan Waterson, 'Queensland', in Helen Irving (ed.), The Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999, p. 104.

(35) Bolton and Waterson, 'Queensland', p.111.

(36) Bolton and Waterson, p. 105.

(37) Bolton and Waterson, p. 105.

(38) Bolton and Waterson, pp. 118-19.

(39) Katherine McConnel, "'Separation is from the Devil, Federation is from heaven": the separation question and Federation in Queensland', New Federalist, no. 4, December 1999, p.21.

(40) Duncan and Waterson, 'Queensland' in Centenary Companion, p. 116.

(41) Duncan and Waterson, p. 118.

(42) CP, 15 July 1899.

(43) Duncan and Waterson, 'Queensland', p. 118.

(44) Archbishop R. Dunne to Moran, 15 September 1884, SCAA. Byrne, Dunne, pp. 143-44.

(45) Bishop M. Gibney to Moran, 17 December 1896, SCAA.

(46) Brian de Garis, 'Western Australia', in Irving (ed.), Centenary Companion to Australian Federation, p.321.

(47) De Gaffs, 'Western Australia', p.315.

(48) Pat Simpson, 'Sir John Waters Kirwan', ADB, vol.9, 1983, p.615; and see Ann Pardon, "'Fighting the battle of Australian unity": John Waters Kirwan and the Federation campaign', New Federalist, no.6, December 2000, pp.2-8. 'Kirwan played a pivotal role in the Western Australian federal movement' (p.8).

(49) De Garis, 'Western Australia', in Centenary Companion, pp.321-22.

(50) J.C. Bannon, 'South Australia', in Irving (ed.) Centenary Companion, p. 170.

(51) Bannon, 'South Australia', pp. 174, 178.

(52) Gerard O'Collins, Patrick McMahon Glynn: A Founder of Australian Federation, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1965, p. 118, fn.26. Bannon's chapter on South Australia in Irving's Centenary Companion suggests that Glynn was one of four Catholics, but he does not identify the fourth. The same book's biographical entries for O'Connor and Clarke describe each as 'one of only three Catholic members among all the colonies' delegates'. Irving (ed.), Centenary Companion, pp. 167. 346, 405. Alfred Deakin's personal account of the Federal Convention said O'Connor and Clarke were the only Catholic members. Federal Story, p.65.

(53) Helen Irving, ' "old familiar hacks" just when they are wanted: the New South Wales delegation', New Federalist, no. 1, June 1998, p.40.

(54) O'Collins, Glynn, p. 118, fn.26.

(55) Anne Winckel, 'Almighty God in the Preamble', New Federalist, no.4, December 1999, p.80. There were thousands of other signatures on petitions presented to various colonial parliaments. Winekel, p.79, fn. 16.

(56) Winckel, 'God in the Preamble', p.80.

(57) O'Collins, Glynn, pp. 137-43; and see, generally, Richard Ely, Unto God and Caesar: Religious Issues in the Emerging Commonwealth, 1891-1906. Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1979.

(58) Winckel, 'God in the Preamble', p.81.

(59) Commonwealth of Australia Constitution, Appendix 3 to Irving (ed.), Centenary Companion, p.460; J. A. La Nauze, The Making of the Australian Constitution, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1972, pp.228-29.

(60) James Warden, 'Tasmania', in Irving (ed.), Centenary Companion, p. 189.

(61) La Nauze, Australian Constitution, pp. 120, 103.

(62) Scott Bennett, 'Tasmanian referenda choices 1898/9', New Federalist, no.3, June 1999, p.8.

(63) Contemporary description quoted in Scott Bennett, 'The Tasmanians: the Convention election'. New Federalist, no. 1, June 1998, p.52.

(64) Marian Quartly, 'Victoria', in Irving (ed.), Centenary Companion, p.220.

(65) Quartly, 'Victoria', p.221.

(66) T. P. Boland, Thomas Cart, Archbishop of Melbourne, University of Queensland Press. Brisbane, 1997, p.290.

(67) Advocate, 5 October 1901, cited in Boland, Carr, p.290.

(68) Bishop J. Higgins to Moran, 17 January 1897, SCAA.

(69) Dawn Peel, 'Patriotism, politics, and personalities: aspects of the 1899 referendum in a rural electorate'. New Federalist, no.4, December 1999, pp.72-77.

(70) Peel, '1899 referendum in a rural electorate', p.74.

(71) Peel, p.75.

(72) Peel, pp.76-7.

(73) Helen Irving, 'New South Wales', in Irving (ed.), Centenary Companion, p.83

(74) Hirst, Sentimental Nation, p.199.

(75) Probably about 37 per cent of enrolled NSW voters did not bother to participate in the 1899 referendum. The figure would be higher if calculated from those entitled to vote but not on the electoral rolls. The figure is still lower than that for the other colonies. Calculated from statistics in John Quick and Robert Garran, The Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth (1901), 2nd edn, Legal Books, Sydney, 1976, and Colin A. Hughes and B. D. Graham (eds), A Handbook of Australian Government and Politics, 1890-1964, ANU Press, Canberra, 1968. The subject has been distorted by Peter Botsman, The Great Constitutional Swindle: A Citizen's View of the Australian Constitution, Pluto Press, Sydney, 2000, which tries to minimise popular participation in the achievement of Federation.

(76) Richard Ely, Unto God and Caesar, pp.x, 107.

(77) A.E. Cahill, 'Cardinal Moran and Australian Federation', Australasian Catholic Record, vol.78, no. 1, January 2001, p.4.

(78) At St Joseph's College, Hunter's Hill, DT, 11 December 1896.

(79) See Cahill, 'Cardinal Moran and Australian Federation' p.14, and Cahill, 'Cardinal Moran and the Chinese', Manna, no.6, 1963, pp.97-107.

(80) DT, 14 July 1894; J. Tighe Ryan, Federation. The Attitude of the Catholic Church: A Special Interview with His Eminence Cardinal Moran, George Robertson, Sydney, 1894. John Hirst seriously underrates Moran's importance by claiming that it was only at this stage that Moran had come out as a federalist.

(81) B.R. Wise to Moran, 17 July 1894, SCAA.

(82) J. T. Ryan to Moran, 28 May 1894, SCAA.

(83) Quoted in B. R. Wise, The Making of the Australian Commonwealth, 1889-1900: A Stage in the Growth of the Empire, Longman's Green, London, 1913, p.221.

(84) Convention organising secretary William Astley (Bulletin writer 'Price Warung') inviting Moran to Bathurst, 17 October 1896, SCAA.

(85) Bulletin, 13 March 1897.

(86) Moran's Bathurst performance and the subsequent Convention elections are discussed more fully in my 'Cardinal Moran and Australian Federation', pp.7-10, and 'Cardinal Moran, Bathurst, and the achievement of Federation' in David Headon and Jeff Brownrigg (eds), The People's Conventions: Corowa (1893) and Bathurst (1896), Department of the Senate, Canberra, 1998, pp.94-102. There now seems to be general agreement that Moran's candidature was the main cause of the strikingly higher voter turnout in NSW compared with the other colonies. Cf. Hirst, Sentimental Nation, p. 148: Irving, "'Old familiar hacks'", p.39.

(87) Freeman's Journal (FJ), 11 June 1898.

(88) FJ, 11 June 1898.

(89) Moran's defence theme elaborated in Cahill, 'Moran and Australian Federation', pp. 13-14. and 'Moran and Bathurst', pp.96, 101-102.

(90) Slattery's influence in misleading Moran was highlighted by a full-page 'Hop' cartoon in the Bulletin when results were published. Hop's Moran says: 'Sorry's the day that I met yez, Tom Slatthery/ Bad luck to yer blarney, yer gab an' yer flatthery', while he hits Slattery with an episcopal slipper. Bulletin, 13 March 1897. Another Hop cartoon a week later, 20 March, showed the water police dragging the Harbour for Slattery, presum ably dumped there by Moran. Slattery's first post-election letter to Moran conveyed a mixture of contriteness and apprehension. Slattery to Moran, 16 Match 1897, SCAA.

(91) CP, 1 April 1899. Slattery's career ended in disgrace in 1905 when he was convicted of misappropriating a client's money. On appeal, the NSW Supreme Court decision was overturned by the new High Court because, technically, 'fraudulence' was not involved. NSW legislation then created a new offence. There were contemporary newspaper allegations that Church funds had also been appropriated. The Newsletter, 15 April 1905. Jack Want defended Slattery in both trial and appeal.

(92) See map from this pamphlet used as illustration of 'Sydney's nightmare' by Hirst, Sentimental Nation, p.50.

(93) CP, 8 April, 13 May. 10 June 1899.

(94) For NSW it was lower at 4.5 per cent. Wray Vamplew (ed.), Australians: Historical Statistics, Fairfax, Syme and Weldon, Sydney, 1987, pp.16. 26. This basic all-ages figure undervalues the importance of the middle-aged demographic group.

(95) Patrick O'Farrell, The Irish in Australia: 1788 to the Present, 3rd edn, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2000, especially pp.148-64, 196-202, 218-21,233-51.

(96) CP, 24 June 1899.

(97) For example, dealing with FJ 'No' arguments in CP, 8 April 1899.

(98) Cf. explanations for his 'conversion' in Bruce Mansfield, Australian Democrat: The Career of Edward William O'Sullivan, 1846-1910, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1965, pp.136-37, 142 and, more recently, David Headon, 'On the side of the angels: E. W. O'Sullivan as republican, feminist and federationist', in Headon and John Williams (eds), Makers of Miracles: The Cast of The Federation Story, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2000, pp. 141-152.

(99) Clive Beauchamp, 'Legitimacy for "Australia's noblest son": the Hastings and Macleay by-election, 898', New Federalist no.4, December 1999, pp.66-71.

(100) Moran interview, CP, 6 July 1901.

(101) 'Labor Ten' meeting supporting George Black MLA, balcony of the New Zealand Hotel, East Sydney, SMH, 18 February 1897.

(102) Bede Nairn, Civilising Capitalism: The Labor Movement in New South Wales, 1870-1900. ANU Press, Canberra, 1973, p.211.

(103) The episode is described in my 'Cardinal Moran's politics', Journal of Religious History, vol. 15, no.4, December 1989, p.526.

(104) Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2000.

(105) Hirst, Sentimental Nation, p.25. The chapter which ends with the passage quoted actually uses verses of the poet John Farrell to illustrate the way in which Federation was seen as a 'sacred cause'. Possibly, Hirst is unaware that Farrell was a Catholic, if not precisely an Irish-Catholic. He was born in Argentina and brought to "Victoria when still an infant by Irish migrant parents. See B. G. Andrews, 'John Farrell', ADB, vol.4, 1972, pp.156-57, and Paul Stenhouse, 'John Farrell and his friends', Journal of the Australian Catholic Historical Society, vol.8, no.3, 1986, pp.40-54.

A. E. Cahill is an Honorary Research Associate, University of Sydney, where he taught history, 1964-98. He is writing a biography of Cardinal Moran, with provisional title Cardinal Moran: Catholicism in Two Worlds, 1830-1911. This is a revised version of a paper given to the Society at its meeting at St Mary's Cathedral on 10 September 2000.