LAUNCHING FEDERATION’S MAN OF LETTERS – PATRICK MCMAHON GLYNN

On Thursday 6 June 2019, the Vice-Chancellor of Australian Catholic University, Professor Greg Craven, joined The Sydney Institute’s Anne Henderson to launch the P M Glynn Institute’s Federation’s Man of Letters.  As Greg Crave explained, polymath Glynn should not have been a man who fell through history’s cracks. But he has. The publication of Anne Henderson’s booklet – with response contributions by Dr Patrick Mullins, Professor Anne Twomey, Dr Susan Rutland, Professor Peter Boyce and The Hon John Fahey – should now prompt further scholarly examination of the contribution made by Patrick McMahon Glynn to Australia’s founding and ongoing policy ideas.

LAUNCHING  FEDERATION’S MAN OF LETTERS  – PATRICK MCMAHON GLYNN

GREG CRAVEN

I am constantly surprised by the extent of my sins of omission.

I could have sworn that if you turned to the index of my Conversations with the Constitution, or tracked down the transcript of my Senate lecture, “The Founding Fathers: Constitutional Kings or Colonial Knaves?”, you would find glowing references to Patrick McMahon Glynn.  He was, after all, one of my favorite constitutional characters. But no, I confess that I omitted any reference to him.

That a Catholic constitutional lawyer could pass over Glynn is a reminder of just how forgettable he has become.

But there is every reason not to forget him. So, it is a delight for me to launch Anne Henderson’s Federation’s Man of Letters tonight.  If this book fulfills only one purpose, it is to remind us why Glynn is actually unforgettable.

Before entering parliament, Glynn was a lawyer.  But he was not your narrow-minded legal draftsman.  He was a polymath.  He was a self-taught intellectual.  He was knowledgeable – indeed volubly wise – about all manner of things.  This is something that is valuable in itself, but it assumes a further significance when juxtaposed with the current crop of politicians who have succeeded him in the federal parliament.  As becomes apparent from Henderson’s essay, Glynn is patently interesting, learned, intellectual, charming. The comparison with today’s politicians is depressing to say the least.

Glynn was also funny and eccentric.  It strikes me that today’s politicians cannot pull this off.

 We don’t find humour accompanying eccentricity in public life anymore.  Politicians have become a boring group of technicians.  They aren’t interested in being polymaths or being learned. Try having a conversation at a dinner party attended by today’s political class, and you will find on almost all occasions that they struggle to sustain an interesting or thoughtful conversation about anything other than politics. (At least outside of New South Wales it is possible to have conversation with them about football.)

There is also a certain drabness to them – they all look the same. It is stating the obvious to say that Paddy Glynn dressed differently from today’s politicians, but the interesting observation to make is that, even in his day, he demonstrated an individuality in his style of dress that is unusual in politicians – or at least male politicians – today.  I challenge any member of the House of Representatives to outdo the magnificent orchids Joseph Chamberlain sported in his buttonhole when attending the House of Commons.

Glynn was a remarkable man, but he also exemplifies a remarkable generation.

 The Founding Fathers represent an exceptional generation in Australian history. They were elected to public office because they were already deemed to be important.  The contrast with today’s political class is stark: they seem to be deemed to be important because they have been elected – no one outside the political class seems to believe politicians are elected because they are actually important.  When they leave political life, it is also notable that very few come out undiminished by the experience.

In 1965, Father Gerald Glynn O’Collins did us a great service by writing the standard biography of his grandfather, Patrick McMahon Glynn. Anne Henderson does not attempt to repeat this feat.  Rather, she has provided us with a shorter essay-length appreciation of Glynn. She does a sterling job of distilling much of what matters most of Glynn and his generation. Of course, she reminds us of his achievements, but she also reveals something of the interesting and quirky character that he was.  She leaves me wishing that I could have dined with him and conversed until late into the night on topics ranging from Shakespeare to the Murray River, to the fairies of our common ancestral country of Galway horses, and the mysteries of the transcendent.

Henderson also demonstrates the sense in which Glynn belonged to a better age in public life. He was an impressive and unique individual but, in all that he did, he demonstrates the extraordinary flowering of Western civilisation that was manifested in the Australian colonies by the close of the nineteenth century.  What an achievement it was for draftsmen in this colonial outpost – many of whom were amateurs – to draft a bill that was largely accepted without amendment by the Mother of Parliaments. Can you imagine if Brexit had been done by the Federation generation? Can you imagine if Federation had been done by the Brexit generation?

Finally, he exemplified the thoughtful Irishman in Australia.  As Henderson reminds us, “his support for the Crown was unambiguous”.  But he rejoiced in the idea that Australia had achieved a republic under the Crown more than a century before that latter-day Ulsterman, Michael Kirby, declared Australia to be a crowned republic (appropriating Bagehot’s description of constitutional monarchy as a disguised republic), and he favoured Irish Independence under the Crown.

Anne Henderson’s essay is a significant asset in its own right, and I am sure that it will help to introduce a new generation to Federation’s man of letters. I am sure that it will help to introduce a new generation to Federation’s man of letters.

 It is published with five responses, however, and it would be remiss of me not to acknowledge the further contributions that they make.

Patrick Mullins situates Henderson’s biographical essay in a venerable tradition stretching back from Geoffrey Bolton to Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, and ultimately to Plutarch – a reminder that Henderson’s reflections on Glynn’s life are as much an expression of Western civilisation as Glynn’s life itself.

Anne Twomey has delved more deeply into Glynn’s legacy as a lawyer, both in terms of his contribution to drafting the Constitution and as an attorney-general.  She tests the claims that he is a liberal and a conservative, as well as the influence of Catholicism.

Suzanne Rutland provides a useful comparison between the experiences of Glynn, as a Catholic, and Sir Isaac Isaacs, as a Jew, amongst the Protestant ascendancy

 of the Federation generation who, for all their brilliance, were also plagued by prejudice.

Peter Boyce offers some telling reflections on the attitudes of “Anglican elites” in Glynn’s day, and traces their fortunes up until our own day, when there are quite different – albeit real – experiences of prejudice.

Finally, ACU’s chancellor, John Fahey, offers us an appreciation of Glynn from the perspective of a modern-day Catholic in public life. The chancellor points out that Glynn is a model of public service informed by Catholic social teaching, even when one is not what Fahey would describe as a “prominent Catholic”.

 He also admits that it was only recently that he learnt anything of substance about Glynn’s life and legacy.

It consoles a vice-chancellor to know that his sins of omission are no greater than those of his chancellor.

It also consoles this vice-chancellor to know that the book we are launching today will leave no excuse for his successors to commit any sins of omission – so far as the legacy of Patrick McMahon Glynn is concerned.