The British Liberal traditions that shaped Menzies
liberal party founder robert menzies’ creed of australian liberalism was informed by the ideas of three thinkers from victorian britain. by david furse-roberts.
Paper delivered at the Robert Menzies Institute Fifth Annual Conference.
Taking the word 'Liberal' for the name of his new Party in 1944, Robert Menzies consciously assumed the mantle of the Victorian British Liberals to realise the same ideals of individual dignity, freedom and opportunity for Australians in the mid 20th-century. Formed in 1859 from the remnants of the old Whig Party, together with free trade-supporting Tories, the British Liberal Party of Gladstone inspired much of Australia’s liberal movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Drawing on one of the conference themes of adapting British ideas to an Australian context, this paper will discuss the extent to which the 19th-century Liberal tradition of Gladstone and others informed the Liberal philosophy of Australia’s longest serving Prime Minister. Whilst Menzies was heir to the more immediate Federation Liberalism of Alfred Deakin, his political creed had even deeper roots in the Whig-derived Liberalism of Victorian Britain.
Humane and reforming yet deferential to the Crown and the constitution, the Whig Liberals of the ‘long nineteenth-century’ had a laudable track record of advancing human dignity and freedom. Campaigning for the abolition of slavery and child labour, they also agitated for the removal of civil disabilities against religious minorities, the extension of the franchise through the Reform Acts, the expansion of education, and the rise of living standards for all.
Surveying the British Liberal movement of the Victorian era, the paper will explore the ways in which the ideas of leading British Whig and Liberal figures including Thomas Babbington Macaulay, John Stuart Mill, and William Gladstone inspired Menzies’ own Liberal philosophy in Australia.
In the Australian Prime Minister’s own writings, Macaulay and Mill were quoted approvingly, whilst Gladstone was evidently admired as one of the great English Liberals who helped inspire the mid-20th century revival of Australian Liberalism.
The first great Whig figure that informed Menzies’ creed of Liberalism was T B ‘Lord MacAulay’, who was not only a celebrated historian but a Whig MP. Born on 25 October 1800, Macaulay qualified as a barrister and became an MP for the Pocket Borough of Calne. In his maiden speech to the House of Commons, he had called for the abolition of civil disabilities of the Jews in the UK. In conjunction with his parliamentary career, Macaulay penned his famous History of England from the Accession of James the Second, releasing the first two volumes in 1848 and the third and fourth in 1855.
It was Macaulay’s History of England that of course popularised the ‘Whig view of history’, a historical narrative that stressed the inevitability of socio-political progress. In Macaulay’s understanding of history, it was the Whigs’ development of liberal democracy, parliamentarianism and constitutional monarchy that were the great driving forces of human progress from a dim, benighted past to a bright, glorious present, with the expectation of an even better future.
As a 20th-century Australian Liberal who revered the English Whig achievements of liberal democracy and constitutional monarchy, Menzies subscribed to this same view of history. In his radio address entitled, ‘The Achievements of Democracy’, delivered on 6 November 1942, Menzies quoted Macaulay with approval as he chronicled the many accomplishments of democratic societies. After reciting a lengthy extract from Macaulay’s History of England, where the Victorian historian had prophecied that the conditions of ordinary people in the 20th century would be superior to those of his own time, Menzies pronounced Macaulay’s prophecies to be ‘more than true’.
Surveying the past 100 years since Macaulay penned his History of England, Menzies pointed to a catalogue of social advances including increased life expectancy, superior health, hygiene and living standards, the abolition of child labour, the enfranchisement of women, higher education, and religious toleration as proof that Macaulay’s, and indeed, his own view of history, had been vindicated. Just as Macaulay had attributed the progress in his own day to the English genius of liberal democracy, Menzies attributed these further advances to that same impulse.
Menzies’ evident admiration for Macaulay no doubt reinforced his own Liberal dedication to parliamentarianism, constitutional monarchy, humane social reform and vision for the common good.
In mid-19th century Britain, the Whig Party morphed into the Liberal Party and we turn now to two leading English Liberals who influenced Menzies, John Stuart Mill and William Ewart Gladstone.
Like Macaulay, JS Mill had been both an author and a parliamentarian. Born in London in 1806, Mill became a brilliant autodidact, mastering Algebra, Latin and the Classics from an early age. From 1865-1868, Mill served briefly as a member of Parliament for the City of Westminster, representing the new Liberal Party founded by Lord John Russell in 1859. Like Macaulay, Mill supported Liberal causes including the abolition of child labour, religious toleration, and the enfranchisement of women.
Mill’s most famous work was his 1859 treatise, On Liberty, where he propounded his liberal philosophy of individual freedom. In this essay he celebrated the value of individuality, defended the rights of the individual against the ‘tyranny of the majority’, and affirmed that the personal morality of individuals was a private matter for neither the state nor the church to determine, providing no harm was done to others.
Menzies himself described Mill’s treatise as full of ‘freshness and truth’ and alluded to it approvingly in the formulation of his own Liberal philosophy. In his June 1942 radio address on the ‘Freedom of Speech and Expression’, he reiterated Mill’s belief in protecting the individual conscience from the despotism of the majority. Defending free speech, Menzies quoted Mill to affirm that any individual claiming the freedom to express a point of view must also be prepared to concede to others the freedom to contradict that point of view. In short, society must allow individuals to freely exchange, debate and test different ideas. In his 1947 Pleasant Sunday Afternoon Speech, Menzies again invoked Mill to declare that ‘the essence of freedom is pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we don’t deprive others of theirs’.
The other Liberal principal of Mill’s that Menzies prized was that of respecting human individuality. In his treatise, Mill famously esteemed eccentrics and argued that attempts to conform individuals to a uniform mould amounted to a despotism over the human mind and body. In his own philosophy of education, Menzies similarly affirmed the value of individuality. Echoing Mill’s thoughts on education, he told a school audience that the ‘good teacher’ is the one who sees his or her pupils ‘as individuals’ not to be ‘forced into one mould but encouraged to expand and grow’.
Yet for all the affinity that Menzies had with Mill’s Liberalism, there were some important differences as well.
Influenced by the thought of Jeremy Bentham, Mill’s Liberalism was utilitarian, whereas that of Menzies was decidedly not. While both men prized individual freedom as key to human flourishing, the chief aim of life for Mill was the maximisation of human happiness and expediency, whereas for Menzies, the most important ideal was building the moral character of individuals and elevating the civilisational quality of society.
While Mill had written a whole treatise promoting utilitarianism, Menzies refuted it, especially in his views on education. In both the classical and Judeo-Christian traditions of learning, education for Menzies was essentially about the pursuit of truth, beauty and goodness. In a 1961 speech on the future of education, he observed that ‘the main thing is that education must not be so resolutely utilitarian as to be pagan and degrading’.
This brings us to the metaphysical differences between the liberalism of Mill and that of Menzies. In common with the freethought of David Hume and Jeremy Bentham, the Victorian philosopher was an agnostic freethinker. As such, his Liberal creed had a secular, utilitarian orientation affirming the primacy of individual autonomy and human happiness. Accordingly, he was inclined to view the Victorian church and many of its teachings, particularly on gender, sexual ethics, and the sabbath, as impediments to individual freedom.
Menzies, on the other hand, though not a deeply pious man in daily habits, identified openly as a Presbyterian. Heavily immersed in the Bible from early childhood, Menzies’ worldview and philosophy of Liberalism had a firm and undeniable spiritual foundation. Peppered with quotes from scripture, his speeches reflected a Judeo-Christian outlook, especially in his understanding of human beings, philosophy of education, opposition to communism, and emphasis on moral character.
Reflecting on the nature of democracy in October 1942, Menzies remarked that democracy is a ‘spirit’, ‘based on the Christian conception that in every human soul there is a spark of the divine’ and that ‘the souls of men stand equal in the sight of God’.
With this spiritual foundation, the Liberalism of Menzies preached the importance of ‘selfless individualism’, exhorting citizens in civil society to be ‘lifters rather than leaners’, ‘contributors rather than beneficiaries’, and ‘givers rather than receivers’. As such, his Liberalism went far beyond J S Mill’s minimalist ethic of ‘no harm’ to others, to appeal instead to the biblical ethic of ‘preferring one another’.
Certainly, the spiritual quality of Menzies Liberalism had more in common with that of the Prime Minister, E W Gladstone, and it is to him we now turn to as the final British Liberal.
Australia’s 17th Governor-General and Minister for Defence in the Menzies Government, Sir Paul Hasluck, once observed that the Liberal Party founder saw himself as the political heir to the iconic Victorian Liberal Prime Minister of Great Britain. Indeed, his older brother, Frank Gladstone Menzies (1892-1978), bore the name of the Liberal statesman.
William Ewart Gladstone was born to Scottish parents in the English city of Liverpool in 1809. Initially aligned with Robert Peel’s Tories, he joined the new Liberal Party in 1859 and went on to serve as Prime Minister four times from 1868-74, 1880-85, briefly in 1886, and finally 1892-94. Like Macaulay and Mill, Gladstone was dedicated to maximising individual liberty and supported policies to loosen the political and economic restraints on citizens.
As a lifelong Church of England loyalist, shifting from Low to High Church Anglicanism later in life, Gladstone’s Liberalism had a sustained spiritual foundation and moral compass. Viewing freedom and liberty not simply as means to human happiness but as moral ideals, his domestic and foreign policies were directed towards that end. According to the British historian David Bebbington, Gladstone’s faith entered his speeches and influenced his policies, most notably on Irish home rule, the dignity of self-help and the limited role of government.
Following the example of Gladstone, Menzies had a similarly moral and spiritual conception of freedom. He viewed the Western struggle against cold war communism, for instance, as a contest between the ‘Christian conception of the freedom of the human mind and of the human spirit’, and ‘the dictated, unfree human spirit that existed under communism’.
The other feature of Gladstonian Liberalism evident in Menzies’ own philosophy was its appeal to working people. In office, Gladstone calibrated his liberal party to appeal to the working class and lower middle class in his dedication to improve their living standards. To help enfranchise workers, Gladstone’s Trade Union Act of 1871 made unions legal and protected their funding from lawsuits.
In Australia in the 1940s, Menzies similarly appealed to working people in his Forgotten People Speech. He appealed to workers including shop keepers, salary earners and farmers whom he credited as the ‘backbone of the nation’. In the 1949 election campaign, he campaigned with advertisements declaring his belief in ‘trade unionism’ and in the rights secured by wage earners. Like Gladstone, he appreciated that socialism had no monopoly on working people and that it was eminently possible for a pro-worker Liberalism to serve their best interests.
The Liberalism of Menzies, however, differed from that of Gladstone in one important respect. In the Victorian era, Gladstone had been a champion of free trade, essentially viewing open trade as a vehicle to furthering freedom, prosperity and world peace. Menzies, on the other hand was a protectionist, and in this respect, he was arguably closer to Benjamin Disraeli than Gladstone. Throughout his prime ministership, Menzies remained loyal to the Deakinite orthodoxy of protecting Australian agriculture, industry and manufacturing. For Menzies, protectionist policies were deemed necessary for sustaining Australia’s manufacturing base, high standard of living, broad middle class, and economic sovereignty.
The differences between Gladstone and Menzies on trade policy were essentially a product of their respective historical contexts. The Premierships of Gladstone coincided with the Victorian golden age of imperial expansion and free trade whilst the Prime Ministership of Menzies represented a natural extension of the Deakinite settlement into the post-war years.
For all the chronological distance between the Victorian British Liberals, Menzies, and our own time, there are golden threads of continuity in Liberal thought that can inform and nourish the Liberal Party of Australia today.
Through the mediating role and example of Menzies, today’s Liberal Party can adopt, and indeed champion, several of these principles exemplified by the great English Liberals.
From the historian T B Macaulay, Australian Liberals can recover his hope in socio-political progress. Despite tough economic times and social challenges, Australian Liberals can still dare to dream that our tomorrows will be brighter than our todays, and that this hope must inspire practical policies to lift the living standards and wellbeing of ordinary Australians.
From the philosopher J S Mill, we must celebrate the individuality of all people and ‘let a thousand blossoms bloom’, particularly in our education system, and recover the primacy of free-speech. Australian Liberals must defend the free intercourse of ideas without the dead-hand of censorship and cancel culture. Such liberty will not only make Australians freer but more intellectually resilient and secure in their own beliefs.
Finally, from the grand statesman W E Gladstone, Australian Liberals can champion a free enterprise Liberalism that is also worker-friendly. Our workers are our nation’s greatest asset and we need to stand up for the interests of workers by putting Australian industries and businesses first. When our workers thrive from plentiful and secure employment, our families are stronger, and the social fabric of our nation is all the healthier.
Above all, from Gladstone and Menzies, Australian Liberals need to appreciate that the Anglo-Australian tradition of Liberalism has a firm Judeo-Christian foundation. Even in our highly secularised age, this spiritual strand of Australian Liberalism is more important than ever to underwriting the dignity and freedom of every individual that is so basic to the Liberal creed. It reminds Australian Liberals that whatever our personal faculties may be, every human being is too intrinsically precious to be expended in the name of utility.
With his acute sense of history and indebtedness to the greats of our past, Menzies was able to remarkably synthesise the thoughts of these English Liberals into a revived Australian Liberalism fit for the mid-twentieth century. As Australian Liberals again consider a ‘reset’ for 2025 and beyond, they too, can be inspired by the best of our past to address the needs of the present and chart the future to a better tomorrow.
David Furse-Roberts is Research Fellow at the Menzies Research Centre.