National Australasian Convention held in Sydney in 1891 - Review.

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Introduction

At the National Australasian Convention held in Sydney in 1891, Andrew Inglis Clark observed:

the full ideal of Federal Government ... in its highest and most elaborate development, is the most finished and the most artificial production of political ingenuity. It is hardly possible that federal government can attain its perfect form except in a highly refined age, and among a people whose political education has already stretched over many generations.

Inglis Clark was quoting Edward Augustus Freeman, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University, whose History of Federal Government in Greece and Italy, first published in 1863, was the 'classic nineteenth century exposition' of the city-state leagues of ancient Greece, and is still cited today by specialists in the field. 

Freeman, who succeeded William Stubbs to the Regius Chair, profoundly shaped nineteenth century conceptions of federalism, although studies of Australian federalism have tended to neglect his influence. While Freeman's reputation suffered in later years, his earlier career was celebrated and revered. Thus Inglis Clark spoke for many of the framers of the  when he described Freeman as the 'eminent historian' who had 'studied the most closely, and written the most exhaustively on federal government'. Many other leading framers, such as John Quick and Robert Garran, relied on Freeman extensively, as did Richard Baker and Thomas Just. In one of their characteristic exchanges, Edmund Barton and Isaac Isaacs traded scholarship derived from Freeman's Growth of the English . A survey of citations in the Federal Convention Debates of the 1890s suggests that on issues of federalism Freeman was second in importance only to James Bryce. Edward Freeman is one of the forgotten doctors of Australian federalism.

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So, where did the Australians derive their understandings about federalism, and how did they assimilate these ideas for their own purposes when drafting the ? In answer to the first question, much attention has rightly been given to James Bryce's classic The American Commonwealth, and in answer to the second question, attention has correctly been given, for instance, to John Quick and Robert Garran's magisterial Annotated  of the Australian Commonwealth and William Harrison Moore's The  of the Commonwealth of Australia. However, Bryce was not the only source of federal ideas, and Moore, Quick and Garran were not his only Australian interpreters. In a ...

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