As a member of the Legislative Assembly, Plunkett assumed a principled stand. He was not part of any faction or interest group, preferring to remain independent and deciding each issue on its merits, and so he became the quintessential cross-bencher. By way of example, he argued for a rise in the salary of the judges, because in his view they were the worst paid public officers in the colony, and he voted against a motion to support the churches on a per capita basis because it was limited to the Christian churches and excluded the Jewish population.17 At the same time, Plunkett took on a heavy caseload as a private barrister.
* * *
In January 1857, upon the resignation of Sir Alfred Stephen as President of the Legislative Council, John Plunkett was appointed to replace him. It was a great honour that recognised his massive contribution to the colony. However, his appointment was to last less than a year. In late 1857, a disagreement arose between Plunkett and Premier Cowper over the right of the National Schools Board, of which Plunkett was still Chairman, to make its own regulations or to appropriate public moneys. Cowper, who had been a supporter of the denominational school system, claimed that since New South Wales now had a responsible, elected Parliament, it was inappropriate for the Board to pass its own regulations and appropriate public moneys, as only Parliament should have those rights. Plunkett wrongly suspected that Cowper was trying to weaken the public school system. The dispute escalated and Plunkett unwisely sent an exchange of letters with Cowper to the newspapers. Cowper retaliated by requesting the Governor and his Executive Council to dismiss Plunkett as Chairman of the National Schools Board. As the Governor-in-Council was now a rubber stamp of the Parliament, the Governor had no choice but to accede.
This was a severe blow to Plunkett. For the second time in his life, Plunkett had acted rashly and publicly in a way that resulted in him losing a position of leadership in a major public institution that he dearly loved and that he had served with distinction for many years. To make matters worse, on 6 February 1858 Plunkett, in disgust, resigned as President of the Legislative Council, as a member of the Council, as a Justice of the Peace and from a number of other public offices. The newspapers and the public reacted with dismay at his resignations, but Cowper had won the day.
Plunkett’s petulance and his failure to accept the realities of modern-day responsible government resulted in him losing what was probably his most treasured post. He had failed to ensure that he had the support of his Premier and demonstrated a lack of understanding of pragmatic politics in a new age. By resigning his post as President of the Legislative Council, he grossly overreacted and showed an unenviable surrender to wounded pride. By his own impetuous actions he needlessly deprived the colony of one of its most accomplished and highly respected elder statesmen.
Plunkett reacted to the public regret about his departure by standing again for a seat in the Legislative Assembly. He won the seat of Cumberland in September 1858; however, he failed to be re-elected in December 1860 in the first vote under universal male suffrage. Plunkett had lost his appeal to the electorate. In May 1861, he returned to the Legislative Council, after being appointed for life by the new Governor, Sir John Young. In 1863 he was appointed as Vice-President of the Governor’s Executive Council. Neither position entailed real power, but they both accorded him great recognition and respect.
* * *
During Maria and John Plunkett’s many years in the colony, their relationship was sorely tested. John’s professional obligations, and indeed his personality, kept Maria from enlarging their social connections to the extent she would have wished. During their time in Australia, her husband only wished to socialise with three people: Governor Richard Bourke, Father John McEncroe and Justice Roger Therry. John Plunkett was socially stiff, and few people were able or wished to befriend him. The only time he would let his hair down was at the annual St Patrick’s Day celebration, which he organised, and at which he would play the fiddle. While Maria was interested in people and their affairs, when John was not attending to his official duties he was more attracted to music and books in the confines of their home. However, as Maria grew older, it was not so much their social isolation or that she had followed him to the far ends of the earth that affected her attitude to her husband. It was more her failure to bear children that most embittered her and caused her in later years to become caustic, contrarian and increasingly cantankerous towards her husband. Despite this, John continued to love Maria dearly, and patiently endured her moodiness and, later in life, her ill health from undiagnosed causes. Maria suffered from ‘unspecified maladies born of ennui and frustration, and her restlessness was assuaged only by constant changes in climate’, resulting in them spending months apart.18 Maria would frequently go on her own to Melbourne and Hobart.
According to Hubert De Castella, who knew both Plunketts well, and whose wife was related to John:
It would be difficult to meet two characters less suited to each other, but despite which they passed a long life together. She, despite her amiability and her irreproachable conduct as a spouse, was egotistical, fantastic and jealous; he was kind, devoted to her and always patient. They had no children and this was without doubt their great tragedy. Madame Plunkett spent herself in regret and used it as a pretext to oppose all enterprise, all plans requiring stability. Demanding and changeable, if her husband proposed anything she didn’t agree with, or was himself opposed to her wishes, there would be an explosion and the poor man, admirable in his sense of duty and in adherence to Christian virtue, when his love had been spent in these scenes, would submit. However, the tempests were for him alone; in the middle of one she could be calm and gracious to others, and as she was possessed of a truly brilliant intelligence and was for the rest an estimable woman, people blamed him, but her popularity did not suffer at all.19
* * *
By early 1865, the health of both John and Maria was deteriorating. Although he was still a member of the Legislative Council, Maria wanted to move permanently to Melbourne, and John reluctantly agreed. His plan was that he would come to Sydney from time to time to fulfil his parliamentary obligations. In reality, it was his concern for Maria’s mental health that convinced John they should relocate their home to Melbourne and he should put up with the inconvenience of frequent travel between the two colonies.20 Once again, John and Maria were apart for long periods.
Later the same year, John Plunkett was appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney. Despite poor health, he returned frequently to Sydney to attend sessions of the Legislative Council and to fulfil his role as Vice-Chancellor. It was said that:
Though he preferred New South Wales, and had here all his sympathies and friendship, yet the climate of the sister colony was better suited to the failing health of his lady. With that forgetfulness of self, which was one of the leading traits of his character, he gave up his own wishes and desires in view of the advantage to be derived by the loved partner of his life. Though residing in Melbourne, he was nearly as much in Sydney as in the rival city; and especially when the Parliament was sitting was accustomed to make prolonged stays in the town with which he had so long been identified.21
In August 1965, Premier Charles Cowper was again in a precarious political situation. Desperate to shore up his government by using the reputation and recognition of John Plunkett to his advantage, he convinced Sir John Young to approach Plunkett and ask him to become Attorney General. It was a request that Plunkett could not refuse, so he reluctantly agreed to come out of retirement and assume the position ‘until a younger and more suitable person [could] be found to take it’.22 He and Maria both returned to Sydney. Within eight months – predictably – the Premier and his Attorney again quarrelled, and Plunkett once again resigned and returned with Maria to Melbourne. Shortly afterwards, in January 1866, Cowper’s Ministry fell, and he was forced to resign as Premier.23
On 22 August 1868, Plunkett’s good friend, Father John McEncroe, died. Roger Therry had departed Austral
ia in 1859 and was now living in retirement in England, where he published his Reminiscences of Thirty Years’ Residence in New South Wales and Victoria. Plunkett’s only close friends were no longer with him, and he felt their absence deeply.
In April 1869, John Plunkett came to Sydney by steamer to attend to personal business. During the journey he felt feverish and sat on deck. By the time he arrived in Sydney he had a rash on his face, which he mistakenly attributed to sunstroke. It was in fact a condition called erysipelas, a serious streptococcal infection that attacks the lymph system, typically affecting the elderly when their immune system is compromised. In the absence of modern-day antibiotics, it was often fatal. He was laid up for several days at the Civil Service Club in Sydney, where he received medical attention that caused the rash to disappear. On returning to Melbourne and Maria, he managed to attend a meeting of the Melbourne Provincial Church Council, where he was the lay Secretary. It was his last official function. Within a matter of days, the rash reappeared and he quickly deteriorated, before passing away at his East Melbourne home on 9 May 1869. Bishop Polding was with him at the end to administer the last rites.
18
LEGACIES
John Hubert Plunkett’s body was transferred to Sydney, where it lay in state at St Patrick’s Church. His funeral service, including a full requiem Mass, was held there on Saturday 15 May 1869, conducted by Archbishop Polding and various other Catholic clergy. It was attended by the Chief Justice, the Premier, the Colonial Treasurer, the Postmaster General, the Attorney General, the Solicitor General, numerous members of Parliament, the French Consul, the Spanish Consul, a large number of barristers, officers and graduates of the University of Sydney, as well as many ordinary citizens. An eloquent and lengthy address on the life and character of the deceased was delivered by Father McCarthy, followed by the mournful music of the ‘Dead March’ from Handel’s Saul.1 The cortege – three-quarters of a mile long – proceeded down a crowd-lined George Street to the Devonshire Street Cemetery.2 John Plunkett had expressed a wish to be buried as close as possible to his long-time friend and confidant Father John McEncroe; however, this was not possible, and he was buried beside his first cousin, Captain Patrick Plunkett, about fifty yards from McEncroe’s grave.3
On his death, John Plunkett was accorded accolades that acknowledged his contribution to the colony over thirty-seven years. The Sydney Morning Herald, which had both lavishly praised and savagely criticised him during his lifetime, frankly admitted their ambivalence over the years and laid out for readers to judge for themselves what had been his strengths and weaknesses:
Notwithstanding that we held opinions on points of controversy the very opposite of his own, these differences tended only to illustrate, in a stronger and purer form, the presence in his mind of those sacred principles of religious liberty which early suffering and later experience had made paramount in his thought and predominant in his conduct … Mr Plunkett is decidedly liberal in his political opinions, but is somewhat diffident in the expression of them on ordinary occasions. It was to an act of indecision of this kind that the Corporation Bill of 1840 was lost. When the subject, however, appears of great importance, Mr Plunkett displays an energy and firmness which command universal respect. Mr Plunkett’s eloquence is not of the first order, but he displays a highly cultivated mind, and an honesty of purpose which more than cover some slight defects of language and utterance.
Finally, the paper ventured the opinion that:
He has left behind a noble reputation which will not diminish in the colony with the lapse of time.
Despite this assuredness by Sydney’s leading newspaper that he would not be forgotten, John Hubert Plunkett has largely been overlooked by posterity in the recognition of those leaders and heroes of the colonial period who were responsible for creating the institutions, structures, civil rights and values that underpin our nation.
* * *
Knowing that he was dying, John Plunkett made a will in his last few days, leaving everything to his wife Maria. However, his estate was worth a mere £2000. The paucity of this amount can be judged by the fact that his salary and pension had been £1200 per year ever since his original appointment as Attorney General in 1836. John Plunkett had left Maria in a parlous financial state in which she was unable to support herself. While most of his colleagues at the Bar had amassed great fortunes, Plunkett had dedicated himself to his office to an extent that was to his, and Maria’s, financial detriment. He had been careful not to invest in anything that could cause a conflict of interest and had failed to make the kind of investments in land that had rendered many of his contemporaries wealthy.4 His charitable contributions to a wide variety of causes covering a broad spectrum of society were frequent and generous. For example, in 1856 he contributed £200 – one-sixth of his annual salary – to the Sisters of Charity to assist them to buy Tarmons, the site of their first hospital at Potts Point. He had financially assisted a family member in great need.5 The underlying reason for his impecuniosity, however, was that John Plunkett was totally uninterested in affluence and saw his real wealth in his accomplishments for the community and the progress that had been made to civil rights and the legal system since his arrival in the colony. His bank passbook at the time of his death showed a final balance of a paltry £87, and recorded recent donations to the Hebrew School, St Vincent’s Hospital and the Good Shepherd Convent, which operated a home for destitute girls.
On Plunkett’s death, his pension automatically ceased. A year after his death, Maria, now back in Sydney and in dire financial straits, petitioned the Legislative Assembly for an ex gratia pension, stating that her husband had left his ‘pecuniary affairs in considerable embarrassment, his pension being almost the only property he possessed’.6 Her application was refused,7 and she was reduced to supporting herself by giving private lessons in music and French. Although the Catholic community rallied around her and attempted to support her, in the end she was forced to accept the charity of the eponymous Sisters for whom she had assiduously worked in a voluntary capacity for many decades, and who in turn housed her during her later years.
Maria died in August 1895 at the age of 82, having endured penury for twenty-six years after John’s passing. One can only imagine that her umbrage during his lifetime at his focus on work and her frustration at their social isolation and lack of progeny were only exceeded by her resentment at how poorly he had provided for her after his death.
* * *
John Hubert Plunkett was a man of patent contradictions. Although it was widely known that he was a devout Catholic, it was equally broadly recognised that he abhorred religious partiality of any kind in public life. For this reason, the upper echelons of his church viewed him with suspicion and doubted his loyalty to their cause, although they took derivative pride in his standing and accomplishments. He was a man who saw his purpose in life as serving the public good, and yet he cared little for public opinion. He was in no way vain about his own abilities, and yet he would not hesitate to attempt to impose his strongly held views on others. He loved his wife Maria dearly, and yet paid scant attention to her frequent complaints of social isolation due to his actions as Solicitor General and Attorney General. One can only understand John Plunkett by knowing his past in Ireland and by appreciating the long history of persecution and discrimination that his forebears had borne during the dark centuries of domination and oppression by the English. It was no coincidence that his most treasured possession was the chalice that had been held during the celebration of the sacrament by his most illustrious and maltreated ancestor, Archbishop Oliver Plunkett. Maria Plunkett’s obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald stated:
Sometime ago Mrs Plunkett presented the Cardinal Archbishop with precious relics of the martyred Irish Primate, Oliver Plunkett, consisting of a chalice, gold watch, and vestments. These relics came into the old lady’s hands through her family, and are now preserved by his Eminence with the greatest reverence at Manly.8
&n
bsp; The chalice and vestments of Archbishop Oliver Plunkett are currently held at St Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.9
* * *
John Hubert Plunkett had a most illustrious career in New South Wales. Many of the reforms he introduced had a lasting effect on the colony, some of which have endured until today. During the Australian Constitutional Conventions prior to federation in 1901, there was no question but that the new nation would be secular, with no religion of state. In fact, the federal Constitution expressly precludes the Commonwealth from passing laws to establish any religion, to impose any religious observance, or to prohibit the free exercise of any religion. It also provides that no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office under the Commonwealth.10 It is in no small measure due to the actions of John Plunkett that this principle was accepted so early in the history of the colony. Similarly, the existence of a vigorous state school system side-by-side with religious schools – all funded by government – was due to a policy developed and pursued by John Plunkett. The University of Sydney and Sydney Grammar School, with their traditions of excellence in secular, liberal education, were, and still are, important community assets for which we should be grateful to those who were responsible for their establishment, including John Hubert Plunkett. Today, the University of Sydney is ranked among the best in the world,11 while Sydney Grammar School is one of the foremost secondary schools in Australia. St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney is still one of the largest teaching hospitals in New South Wales, as it provides first-rate medical services to people of any religion without discrimination or proselytism.
As Solicitor General and Attorney General, John Hubert Plunkett brought great integrity and diligence to his high office during a time of enormous legal, social and administrative change in the colony. There can be few occupations more demanding and of more social value than to be the state’s principal prosecutor of major crime, as Plunkett was for twenty-four years. In the author’s view, there has been no Attorney General before or since who has had more influence on the passage of significant legal reforms than John Hubert Plunkett. Ironically, had he become a judge, it is likely that he would have had less influence on the development of the colony. His stand on a whole host of issues was progressive and farsighted. They included his views on: convict assignments, floggings, the abolition of military juries, qualifications for civilian jurors, the rights of emancipated convicts, the unrestricted power of magistrates, the obligation of the courts to punish those responsible for massacres of the Aboriginal population, the right of Aborigines to give evidence in the courts, the division between church and state, elected rather than appointed Legislative Councils, responsible self-government, secular public educational institutions at primary, secondary and tertiary level, teacher education, the provision of secular public health services, and the death penalty. Viewed in the context of his time, he showed great humanity, perspicacity, bravery and strength of purpose. In the author’s view, he should be excused for those few idiosyncratic views that he espoused in later life that now appear retrograde and deeply flawed, such as his attitude to Chinese migration and his support for a hereditary Australian aristocracy. His views on the merits of an appointed Upper House were quite unremarkable in the 1850s.
Murder at Myall Creek Page 22