- Everyday Life,’ 1888.
A third and fourth volume of ‘Gossip of the Century’ was edited by her sister, Miss Rachel Harriette Busk, in 1898, with the alternative title ‘Social Hours with Celebrities.’
[Athenæum, 7 April 1894; Burke's Landed Gentry, i. 242–3; Allibone's Dict. Suppl. i. 269.]
BYRNES, THOMAS JOSEPH (1860–1898), premier of Queensland, born in Brisbane, Queensland, in November 1860, was the son of Irish Roman catholic parents. He was educated at the Bowen primary school, gained two state scholarships, and entered the Brisbane grammar school. He graduated B.A. and LL.B. at Melbourne University, and was called to the bar in Victoria in 1884, but returned to Queensland to practise in the following year. He quickly attained a leading position at the supreme court bar, and accepted a seat in the legislative council in August 1890, with the office of solicitor-general, in the Griffith-McIlwraith ministry. He made his reputation by the firm manner in which he dealt with the labour troubles in Queensland. A conflict between the shearers' union and the pastoralist association on the subject of the employment of non-union labourers by members of the association almost attained the dimensions of an insurrection in the Clermont districts. Woolsheds were fired, policemen ‘held up,’ and a state of terrorism established. To meet the emergency Byrnes introduced Mr. Balfour's Peace Preservation Act of 1887, with necessary modifications. It was carried in one week's fierce parliamentary struggle, during which all the members of the labour party were suspended. Byrnes then despatched an adequate force of volunteers to the seat of trouble, who effectually quelled lawlessness.
In 1897 Byrnes accompanied the premier. Sir Hugh Muir Nelson, to England on the occasion of the queen's diamond jubilee. Returning after visiting the east of Europe, he succeeded Nelson as premier in March 1898, the first native-born prime minister of Queensland. The short period of his administration was marked by a vigorous policy. He supported Australian federation, and was desirous of establishing one great university for the whole of Australia. He died at Brisbane on 27 Sept. 1898, and was buried in Toowong cemetery.
[Australasian Review of Reviews, October 1898; Times, 28 Sept. 1898; Daily Chronicle, 1 Oct. 1898; Melbourne Argus, 28–30 Sept. 1898.]
C
CAIRD, Sir JAMES (1816–1892), agriculturist and author, was the third son of James Caird of Stranraer, Wigtownshire, a ‘writer’ and procurator fiscal for Wigtownshire, by Isabella McNeel, daughter of Archibald McNeel of Stranraer. He was born at Stranraer in June 1816, and received his earliest education at the burgh school. Thence he was removed to the high school at Edinburgh, where he remained until he entered the university. After studying at the university for about a year he left without taking a degree, and went to learn practical farming in Northumberland. His stay in Northumberland was terminated after about twelve months by an offer to him of the management of a farm near Stranraer, belonging to his uncle, Alexander McNeel. In 1841 he took a farm called Baldoon, on Lord Galloway's estate near Wigtown, a tenancy he retained until 1860. He first attracted public notice in connection with the controversy between free trade and protection which continued after the repeal of the corn laws. An ardent free trader, he published in 1849 a treatise on ‘High Farming as the best Substitute for Protection.’ The support of a practical farmer with a literary style was of the highest service to the supporters of free trade, and the work speedily ran through eight editions. It introduced Caird to the notice of Peel, who commissioned him in the autumn of the same year to visit the south and west of Ireland, then but slowly recovering from the famine of 1846, and to report to the government. His report was subsequently enlarged into a volume, and published in 1850 under the title of ‘The Plantation Scheme, or the West of Ireland as a Field for Investment.’ The sanguine view which he took of the agricultural resources of the country led to the investment of large sums of English capital in Irish land. In the beginning of 1850 the complaints by English landlords and farmers of the distressed state of agriculture since the adoption of free trade caused the ‘Times’ newspaper to organise a systematic inquiry. This was encouraged by Peel in a letter to Caird (6 Jan. 1850), who had been nominated the ‘Times’ principal commissioner.
