PREFACE.
IT is unnecessary to enter into any lengthened exposition of the objects and utility of a work such as the present, either from an English or an Australasian point of view. The public appetite for such publications is evidenced by the issue of innumerable "Biographical Dictionaries" and the success of such a work as the "National Dictionary of Biography," and there seems no valid reason why what Sir Thomas McIlwraith calls "the future Australasian empire" should not have the careers of its publicists in various walks of distinction recorded in permanent and concise form. Owing to the increase of federal feeling in the various colonies, the present moment seems an opportune one for the presentation of a work which "federalises," so to speak, the mass of what previous writers have produced in a similar direction in regard to the separate colonies. I have often had occasion to remark on the limited knowledge which the public men of one colony possess of the public men of another, and in a period which has produced the "Commonwealth of Australasia Bill" I may perhaps be excused for endeavouring to contribute my mite towards the extension of that intercommunity of knowledge which is to a large extent the necessary condition precedent to intercommunity of sympathy and action.
Not only has the federal feeling in Australasia witnessed a wonderful growth of recent years, but the interest in and desire for knowledge about the Australasian colonies has been quickened to at least an equal extent at the centre of the empire. It is hoped therefore that the "Dictionary of Australasian Biography" may at the present juncture equally meet the acceptance of large classes both in England and at the Antipodes. It has been one of the most difficult parts of an arduous task to combine that particularity which local biography for local circulation demands with that more comprehensive, if at the same time more condensed, treatment which is likely to suit the taste of readers twelve thousand miles away from the stage on which the actors whose achievements are set forth have played their parts. In the attempt to furnish a book which will be equally satisfactory to English and colonial readers, I cannot hope to have entirely succeeded; but I have at least kept this object in view, and am sanguine
