Page:The Dictionary of Australasian Biography.djvu/43

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DICTIONARY OF AUSTRALASIAN BIOGRAPHY.
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known as the Permanent Militia. As Native Minister he succeeded in bringing about a better understanding between the two races than had existed for years, especially in the so-called "King Country." In the second session of 1891, having formed a strong Government, he introduced and carried the various policy Bills, the principles of which the country had affirmed at the previous general election. He is a strong advocate of a closer alliance with the mother country, holding that there is already a system of imperial federation which may be developed—that an Imperial Council of Advice in London should be the nucleus of an Imperial Parliament—and that the colony should share in proportion to population and wealth in the defence of the empire. He is opposed to New Zealand being part of an Australasian Federation on the broad ground that the conditions are dissimilar, and that autonomy would ultimately be destroyed. In May 1870 Mr. Ballance married Ellen, daughter of the late David Anderson, of Wellington.

Bancroft, Joseph, M.D., M.R.C.S., L.S.A., President of the Medical Board, Queensland, was admitted M.D. of St. Andrews University, M.R.C.S. England, and L.S.A. London in 1859. He practises in Brisbane, and is president of the Medical Board and a member of the Central Board of Health. He has been a trustee of the Queensland Museum since 1876.

Barker, Right Rev. Frederic, D.D., second Bishop of Sydney, was the son of the late Rev. John Barker, Incumbent of Baslow, in Derbyshire. He was born in 1808, and educated at Grantham School and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1829. He was ordained in 1831, and was subsequently incumbent of Upton, in Cheshire, Edgehill, near Liverpool, and of his native parish of Baslow. After the death of Dr. Broughton, the first Bishop of Sydney, he was selected by the Archbishop of Canterbury to succeed him in his episcopate, and as Metropolitan of the Province of Australia. His consecration took place in Nov. 1854, and he arrived in Sydney in May 1855. For some time previously the project of introducing Synodical Church Government had been before the Church, and after the passing of the Grants for Public Worship Prohibition Act, the organisation so much desired by the clergy and laity was at length established, the first synod of the diocese of Sydney assembling on Dec. 5th, 1866, and Bishop Barker, by the constitutions of the Church, becoming its President. The diocese of Sydney made great progress under his care, and he thrice visited England in the promotion of its interests. When State aid was abolished statutory provision was made for the retention of Bishop Barker's stipend of £2,000 per annum. Under his primacy no less than seven new sees were established in Australia, viz., Perth [Western Australia] in 1856; Brisbane [Queensland] in 1859; Goulburn [New South Wales] in 1863; Grafton and Armidale [New South Wales] in 1866; Bathurst [New South Wales] in 1869; Ballarat [Victoria] in 1875; and North Queensland in 1878. His first wife died in Sydney in 1876, and he married, secondly, Mary Jane, elder daughter of Edward Woods of London, and having had a paralytic seizure, he paid a fourth visit to Europe in 1881 to recuperate his health, but died after an illness of four weeks at San Remo on April 6th, 1882. He was buried at Baslow.

Barker, John, sometime Clerk of the Parliaments, Victoria, is the eldest son of the late John Barker and Mary Anne, his wife, and was born at Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire. He emigrated to Port Phillip (now Victoria) in 1840, after entering himself for the bar at Lincoln's Inn, and engaged in pastoral pursuits with his brother Edward, afterwards a well-known physician in Melbourne. Revisiting England, he was called to the bar in 1843; and in 1844 married Susanna, daughter of Richard Hodgkinson, of Morton Grange, Nottingham. He returned to Port Phillip in Nov. 1844, accompanied by his brother William (who subsequently practised as a surgeon at Emerald Hill, Melbourne). In the next year he was appointed a magistrate, and in August 1849 was one of the Commissioners under the Disputed Boundaries Act, having the Hamilton district assigned to him. Mr. Barker, who was admitted to the Victorian bar in Nov. 1851, was in October of that year, on the separation of Port Phillip from New South Wales and its formation into the colony of Victoria, appointed Clerk of the Legislative Council then constituted, and suc-

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