Henry Parkes

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Sir Henry Parkes (1815 – 27 April 1896) was a colonial Australian politician and longest non-consecutive Prime Minister of the Colony of New South Wales, the present-day state of New South Wales in Australia, a colonial Australian colonial Australian republic.

He has been referred to as the "Father of Federation" from his early promotion of British convict transport as a pioneer of the Australian continental railroad network in 1889, as the first of a series of meetings that led to Australia's federation.

He died in 1896, five years before the procedure was complete.

During his lifetime, he was dubbed "the most influential figure in Australian politics" by The Times.

Sir Henry Parkes had flaws, but he was nevertheless "a large-brained self-educated Titan whose natural field was discovered in Parliament," Alfred Deakin wrote.

Early life

Parkes was born in Canley (now a suburb of Coventry) and christened in Stoneleigh, England, and christened in the nearby village of Stoneleigh. Thomas Parkes, his father, was a small-scale tenant farmer. Martha Falconbridge, his father, died in 1842 and would be the namesake for his house in New South Wales. He had no formal education and was working on a ropewalk for 4 pence a day at an early age. He moved to a brickyard, describing it as "breaking stones on the Queen's highway with barely enough clothing to keep him warm." He was apprenticed to John Holding, a bone and ivory turner in Birmingham, and joined Birmingham's 1832 political union around 1832. He was associated with the political movements that aimed to improve living and working conditions for the working classes between 1838 and 1838.

Parkes grew interested in poetry as a young adult. He wrote poems (later included in his first collection of poems) that were addressed to Clarinda Varney, the daughter of a local butcher. He married Clarinda Varney on July 11, 1836, and went to live in a single room house. Parkes opened business in Birmingham on his own account, and the two companies had a difficult time trying to make ends meet.

Parkes and his wife immigrated to New South Wales after the loss of their two children at an early age and a few weeks of struggling in London. The Strathfieldsaye, which arrived in Sydney on July 25, 1839, was on display. Two days before, another child was born. They had only a few shillings between them and had to sell their possessions when Parkes were looking for jobs. He was eventually employed as a labourer for John Jamison, one of the colony's richest settlers, on the Regentville estate near Penrith. He was paid £25 a year in food rations. After six months at Regentville, he returned to Sydney and spent time in several low-paying positions, first with an ironmongery store and then with a company of engineers and brass-founders.

Parkes was hired by the New South Wales Customs Department as a Tide Waiter and given the responsibility of inspecting merchant vessels to shield against smuggling a year after his arrival in Sydney. William John Gibbes, Jamison's son and uncle of Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes, who ruled Regentville and was the nephew of Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes, had been accepted for this position.

Even though Parkes' financial situation improved as a result of his stable new government job, he was also burdened with a backlog of undischarged debts. Parkes also wrote poetry. In 1842, a book titled Stolen Moments was published in Sydney. In his Fifty Years of Australian History, Harpur and William Augustine Duncan, the editor of a local newspaper, notes that these two men became his "chief advisors" in matters of intellectual resource. He left the Customs Department in early 1846 after a spat with Colonel Gibbes over a press leak that worried about the suspected conduct of one of Parkes' co-workers. Despite this, Parkes will continue to live on friendly terms with Gibbes and his families for the remainder of his life. Frederick Jamison Gibbes, Gibbes' grandson, was also a member of the Parliament of New South Wales in the 1880s, and like Parkes, he became a promoter of federation.

Parkes worked in the private sector following his release from the Customs Service. He began working as an ivory and bone turner and later operated a store of his own in Hunter Street. At one time, he owned many newspapers, including The People's Advocate and The New South Wales Vindicator Empire. After running up debts totaling £48,500, he was not profitable as a businessman and eventually went bankrupt. He continued to promote Australian culture and published poetry in his journals.

Early campaigns

Parkes expressed an interest in political affairs early in his Australian days. He was instrumental in the colony's quest for self-governance, the most notable of which was present. For the first time, this was a hot political issue; the New South Wales Legislative Council had been reformed in 1843 to include elected members. He has been both an opponent of convict transportation to Australia and a promoter of land reform.

In Atlas and the People's Advocate, he expressed his views on political topics. He first became interested in politics in 1848 while working for Robert Lowe in his fruitful campaign in the Legislative Council elections. The following year, he accepted a petition to the United Kingdom's Parliament for fewer restrictions on voting. For the first time, he spoke out in favour of universal suffrage. Parkes found his own speech to be very weak. The petition was successful in lowering voting thresholds.

Parkes protested the arrival of a convict ship in Sydney on 8th June 1849. He continued to promote the anti-transportation cause with writings and speeches until the British Government effectively ended almost all traffic to Australia in 1853.

Parkes founded the Empire newspaper in December 1850. It was a broadsheet that was only released weekly at first, and it soon became a daily newspaper. Parkes was loyal to the British Empire, but he wanted to have a voice as a critic of the establishment. As a result, the paper became dismissive of incumbent Governor Charles Augustus FitzRoy and the remainder of the colonial government. William Wentworth's attempt to introduce self-governance was also attacked because it included an unelected Legislative Council and a restricted franchise for the elected Legislative Assembly. After several amendments to make it more democratic, the plan was eventually adopted. Parkes said "nothing was given to Mr Wentworth's proposal in the midst of a tense resistance to its flaws."

In 1854, Wentworth traveled to England to support the bill in its first session in Parliament, and resigned his position as a representative for the City of Sydney. Charles Kemp and Parkes were nominated for the position, and the latter was elected by 1427 votes to 779. Parkes had argued for the extension of the people's influence, increased education, and a bold railway policy.

Parkes, in any case, began his political career largely. He was a member of the Legislative Council of a minority, and he and his political allies could afford to wait until the new constitution was in force. His workload in the Empire office was extremely demanding, and he had announced his intention of resigning from parliament in December 1855. He was obliged to change his mind, and a month later he stood as a liberal candidate for Sydney City in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly.

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