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Inglis Clark’s 1888 ‘Memorandum
on Chinese Immigration'
Introduction and commentary by Richard Ely. Read
PDF file
Clark’s ‘The Future of
the Australian Commonwealth:A Province or a Nation?’
Introduced by Richard Ely. Read
PDF file
Inglis Clark’s ‘Machinery
and Ideals in Politics’ Introduction by Michael Roe
Read PDF file
Protecting Commonwealth from Church:
Clark’s ‘Denominational Education and Beyond’,
Richard Ely Read
PDF file
Clark’s ‘Why I am a Democrat’
Introduced by Richard Ely Read
PDF file
Clark's exercise book containing his
essay 'Why I am a democrat'.
- click to enlarge
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Why
I am a democrat
I am a democrat, firstly because the
distribution of political power and privileges in accordance
with the physical, moral and intellectual capacities
of individuals is an impossibility, and because the
political organisation of society upon a basis of the
accidental and artificial inequalities of birth and
wealth inevitably produces evils that, in proportion
to their extent, and their intensity proclaim the institution
under which they arise as incapable of accomplishing
the highest and ultimate purposes for which the social
organism ought to exist.
In view of this aspect of the question
I once described myself in my place in Parliament as
a Democrat by despair, because, while believing that
all other systems were self-condemned by their distinctive
fruits, I wished to guard myself from being understood
as believing that the triumph of democracy would regenerate
humanity and expel evil from the world.
I indulge in no dream
like that; but I desire the abolition of every institution
that confers political power or personal privilege as
an appendage to birth from a particular parentage, or
to the possession of wealth, as so many obstacles to
a more efficient marshalling and co-operation of the
energies of humanity in its combat with the evils that
arise inevitably from the imperfections and limitations
of man's nature.
To evoke the highest efforts on the
part of every soldier in an army in the hour of battle
it is necessary that they all should be animated by
a mutual affection for one another and a mutual confidence
in the faithfulness and the courage of each; and these
can be secured only by such an equality of participation
in the burdens and dangers of the
battle as the topographical condition and tactical exigencies
permit. But where individuals associate on terms of
permanent inequality in the participation [in?] burdens
and privileges there will be either distrust, suspicion,
resentment and rancour or cringing deference and servility
on the one side; and a corresponding distrust, suspicion
and hatred or arrogance and contempt on the other. All
such sentiments are directly and
essentially antisocial in their nature and effects and
tend therefore to the disorganisation and disruption
of the social and political systems which produced them.
The highest social ideal is the participation
of each and all in the advantages and joys of true comradeship
in all that makes our life, but this ideal can never
be realised without an equality in mental culture and
in capacity of aspiration and sympathy such as can be
produced only after the removal of those extreme inequalities
of material condition and
political power and privilege which in the past have
separated master from slave, lord from serf, and peer
from peasant and made such comradeship impossible.
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(Go to pdf version
of essay with commentary by Richard Ely)
The essay from which
this comes is 'Why I am a Democrat' Clark papers, C4/D38.
University of Tasmania Archives. It is not certain when it
was
written, but some scholars suggest around the mid-1890s. It
is in the
style of a political activist, so is likely to pre-date Clark's
move to
the Supreme Court bench in 1898.
Clark states an ideal
in this essay, and does so passionately; yet there
are hints confirmed in other writings by Clark that he saw
elements
in human nature as seriously impeding realization of the democratic
ideal. It had to be fought for, in the face of 'the evils
that arise
inevitably from the imperfections and limitations of man's
nature', and
success was not assured.
Clark came from a
strict Calvinistic Baptist background. He was baptised
as an adult when he was twenty-two years of age. Shortly after
that,
Clark became a Unitarian, ardent for human progress; but one
can wonder
if he retained, nevertheless, elements of Calvinist pessimism
about human
nature. (notes by Richard Ely)
Some of Clark's books of essays. Clark
Papers, University of Tasmania Archives, Hobart
View larger photo
‘The Constitution of the United
States of America’ (undated 82 page manuscript in
Clark's handwriting: being part of Clark's lectures on the
evol-ution of federalism), Clark Papers, University of Tasmania
Library, C4/F1.
‘Observations on the subject of
Naturalization under the Constitution of the Commonwealth’,
Deakin Papers, National Library of Australia, Canberra Ms
no. 1540/14/617. xxxiv-v. Referred to and partly quoted on
pp. xxxiv-v of J Williams’‘Introduction’ to
the 1997 Reprint of Clark’s 1901 Studies in Australian
Constitutional Law.
‘The Evils of Monarchy’,
Clark Papers, University of Tasmania Library Archives, Hobart,
C4/F4b. Referred to and partly quoted on pp. x-xi of J Williams,
‘Introduction’ to the 1997 reprint of Clark’s
Studies in Australian Constitutional Law, and partially
reproduced in S Bennett (ed.), The Making of the Commonwealth,
Melbourne, p. 139.
Drafts and copies of various essays. Clark
Papers, University of Tasmania Archives, Hobart, C4/D19-D48.
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