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Justice 5 October 1903 to 7 January 1920

Edmund Barton (1849-1920) had one of the most distinguished and significant careers of any Australian in public life. He served in the NSW Colonial parliament, was a key architect of Federation, as Australia’s first Prime Minister, and spent over 16 years on the inaugural High Court bench.¹

Born in Glebe (NSW), Barton was the 11th of 12 children of English immigrant parents, William and Mary. A brilliant classics scholar, he graduated from the University of Sydney in 1868 with first-class honours and the University Medal. In 1877 he married Jane (Jean) Mason Ross, and they had six children.²

Barton established himself at the Sydney Bar, appearing in several circuit courts. Entering colonial politics in 1879, he was appointed Attorney-General in 1889, becoming a QC in March of that year.³ As Attorney-General he drafted the government’s ‘one man, one vote’ legislation, and its bank legislation during the financial crisis of May 1893.⁴ He resigned as Attorney-General in December of 1893.

Barton was appointed to the Privy Council in 1901. He refused knighthoods in 1887, 1891, and 1899, but accepted in 1902 and was appointed a GCMG. He received honorary degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh. In 1905, the Japanese Government conferred the Grand Cordon, Order of the Rising Sun (1st Class) for fostering relations between Australia and Japan.⁵

Having already achieved much for Australia’s development, Barton was encouraged by friends and the Governor-General, Lord Tennyson, to leave the ‘pressure of politics for a more measured lifestyle’ on the newly-formed High Court, established through the Judiciary Act 1903 (Cth). Reluctantly, he exited partisan political life and was sworn in as the Senior Puisne Justice on 5 October 1903.⁶

Barton proved to be ‘an unexpectedly good and scrupulously impartial’ judge, possessing ‘one of the keenest and quickest of intellects’.⁷ His wide reading of British and American jurisprudence was ‘displayed in his sound constitutional opinions’.⁸ During his early days on the Court, Barton preferred to concur with Chief Justice Samuel Griffith, rather than author his own judgement. Indeed, on 164 reported cases he conferred during the first three years on the Court. However, by 1906, he increasingly wrote separate opinions, and ‘on occasions strongly dissent[ed] from colleagues’.⁹

Despite his disappointment at not being named Chief Justice after Griffith’s retirement, he openly welcomed the new Chief Justice, Adrian Knox. Barton remained on the High Court bench until his death in 1920 at Medlow Bath in the NSW Blue Mountains. Knox wrote to Lady Barton after his death saying,

‘I shall never forget his kindness to me on many occasions during my career and most of all on my appointment to CJ. I doubt if any other man in his position would have gone out of his way to convince me of his gracious feelings toward me’.¹⁰

Sir John Campbell Longstaff 
Born in Clunes, Victoria, John Longstaff (1861-1941) was an Australian portraitist, war artist and five-time winner of the Archibald Prize (1925-35). Longstaff studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School alongside Emanuel Phillips Fox, Tudor St George Tucker, Tom Humphrey, John Mather and Frederick McCubbin. Awarded the School’s first travelling scholarship in 1887, he travelled to Europe, settling in Paris and later in Spain. Throughout the early 1890s Longstaff exhibited successfully and in 1893 moved to London where he worked as a fashionable portrait painter, regularly exhibiting at the Royal Academy and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. During 1918-20 Longstaff was an official war artist with the AIF. Returning to Australia in 1920, he later held several official positions including president of the Victorian Artists’ Society, the Australian Art Association, the Australian Academy of Art, and a trustee of the Public Library, Museums and National Gallery in Victoria. In 1928 Longstaff became the first Australian artist to be knighted. His work is represented in major state and regional galleries across Australia.¹¹

Edmund (Toby) Barton
by John Campbel Longstaff
1911
Oil on canvas
143 x 105 cm
Historic Memorials Collection,
High Court of Australia

References
1. Information in this biography has been taken from the following: J Reynolds, Edmund Barton, Prime Minister of Australia 1901–1903, third edition, Bookman Press Pty Ltd, Melbourne, 1999; N Church, ‘Edmund Barton – 100 years on’, FlagPost, Parliamentary Library blog, 7 January 2020; M Rutledge, ‘Barton, Sir Edmund (Toby) (1849–1920)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1979; ‘Edmund Barton’, National Archives of Australia. See also ‘Edmund Barton’ in Historic Memorials Collection Portraits: Prime Ministers, Parliament of Australia, 2021. Websites accessed 16 March 2021.
2. ‘Edmund Barton’s partner: Jane Barton’, National Archives of Australia, accessed 8 July 2021.
3. Rutledge, op. cit.
4. G Bolton and J Williams, ‘Barton, Edmund’ in T Blackshield, M Coper, and G Williams, eds, The Oxford Companion to the High Court of Australia, Oxford University Press, South Melbourne, Victoria, 2001, p. 54.
5. Rutledge, op. cit.
6. Bolton and Williams, op. cit.
7. Rutledge, op. cit.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Bolton and Williams, op. cit., p. 53.
11. L Astbury, ‘Longstaff, Sir John Campbell (1861–1941)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy, 1986; K Robertson, ‘Sir John Longstaff’, Design & Art Australia Online, 2011; ‘Longstaff, (Sir) John Campbell’, A McCulloch, S McCulloch and E McCulloch Childs, eds, The New McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art, Aus Art Editions in association with The Miegunyah Press, 2006, p. 625. Websites accessed 25 March 2021.