Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/475

 certain of the verse; his posthumous poems, none of which have yet been published, also include a series of fine Northumbrian ballads.] 

SYME, DAVID (1827–1908), Australian newspaper proprietor and economist, born on 2 Oct. 1827 at North Berwick, Haddingtonshire, Scotland, was youngest of five sons and two daughters of George Syme, parish schoolmaster of North Berwick, by his wife Jean Mitchell of Forfarshire. Of his brothers two died in early manhood and two, Greorge and Ebenezer, reached middle age. The elder of these, George (M.A., Aberdeen), was successively a free-church minister in Dumfriesshire and a baptist pastor in Nottingham, while the younger, Ebenezer, who was educated at St. Andrews, also joined the baptist ministry, which he abandoned in 1850 to become sub-editor of the ’Westminster Review.' Both the brothers, George and Ebenezer, joined David in Melbourne, and died within a few years of their settlement there.

After education by his father, who died when David was sixteen, he visited his eldest brother, James, who was practising as a surgeon at Bathgate, Linlithgowshire. Accepting the doctrine of universal salvation promulgated by [q. v.] of Kilmarnock, he next studied theology with him, but in 1849 he went to Germany and to Vienna, and a year's study of philosophy in Heidelberg destroyed his faith in Christianity. On his return to Scotland he procured a situation as reader on a Glasgow newspaper, but hopeless of advancement he sailed at the end of 1851 for San Francisco, and went from Sacramento to the goldfields, where he had no luck and disliked his companions. The report of the discovery of gold in Australia brought him to Melbourne in 1852, after a perilous voyage in an unseaworthy ship. In the Australian goldfields he was no more prosperous than in California, although on one occasion his claim included what was afterwards the famous Mt. Egerton mine, but it was jumped, and Syme could obtain no redress from the government. Meanwhile David's brother Ebenezer, whose literary abilities were high, followed in his footsteps and settled in Melbourne. On 17 Oct. 1854 a newspaper, 'The Age,' was founded there by two local merchants, John and Henry Cooke, and Ebenezer was appointed one of the editors. The editors supported the cause of the miners at the time of the Ballarat riots, to the disgust of the proprietors, who gave the paper up; the editors thereupon ran it for themselves, and in eighteen months the concern was nearly bankrupt. In 1856, on his brother's advice, David bought 'The Age' for 2000l., which he had earned on the goldfields. In 1857, after eighteen months' trial, the paper proved unable to support both brothers, and David left it to Ebenezer's sole care, and turned with some success to road- contracting. Ebenezer, who was elected member for Mandurang in the first legislative assembly of the colony, but retired at the end of his term owing to inability to reconcile journalistic independence with party obligation, died of consumption in March 1860. David then took control of 'The Age,' mainly in the interest of his brother's wife and family, and for ten years worked it single-handed on independent lines which championed protection in the working-class interests, and vigorously challenged capitalist predominance. He attacked the distribution of 60,000,000 acres of land in Victoria among a thousand squatters, who paid a rent of 201. apiece, and he denounced the monopoly of the importers, which made local industries impossible and denied work to skilled artisan immigrants. The diminution in the output of gold threatened in these circumstances to drive from the colony the poorer population. Syme in his paper boldly urged a programme which included the opening of the land to small farmers and a system of protective duties on imports, a policy which none in Australia suggested before him. Syme, through 'The Age,' soon became the admitted leader of the liberal party, but it was necessary to secure manhood suffrage and a diminution of the powers of the upper house before legal effect could be given to his proposals. A land act embodying Syme's policy was passed in 1869, and until his death he never ceased to urge drastic measures for the prevention of large estates. At the same time 'The Age' also demanded, and finally obtained, in addition to land and protective legislation, disestablishment, payment of members, and free compulsory secular education. Syme's enemies, the landowners and importers, ceased to advertise in 'The Age,' and in 1862 they persuaded the premier, (Sir) [q. v.], to withdraw the advertisements of the government. The price of the paper had been reduced in 1861 from 6d. to 3d. Now in 1862 Syme reduced it further to 2d., and his attacks on the government redoubled. Meanwhile