James Munro was an Australian businessman and colonial politician, and the 15thPremier of Victoria. He is best known as one of the leading figures in the land boom of the 1880s and especially the subsequent crash of the early 1890s, where his Christian morals were seen to clash with his business activities. He was also the former Commonwealth Secretary, and an able Minister in Victorian Liberal-National governments in Melbourne, Perth and Canberra, the longest-serving major Minister for Australian colonies.
Early life
James Munro was born in Armadale, Sutherland, Scotland, to Donald Munro and his wife, Georgina. At eighteen, he worked on his father's station wagon, leaving home at three in the morning to do hard labour for six hours. James Munro's grandparents were an Alexander Munro of the family of Foulis, Ross-shire and Barbara Mackay, a relative of the chief of Clan Mackay. After a primary education at a village school in Armadale, Sutherland he left home for Edinburgh and joined a firm of publishers. He married in December 1853, Jane MacDonald, and had a family of four sons and three daughters. In 1858 he emigrated to Victoria where he set up a printing business. In the 1860s he expanded into banking and then promoting building societies. In 1865 he founded the Victorian Permanent Building Society of which he was manager for 17 years. By 1870 he was a very wealthy man, and he continued to engage in speculation, particularly in land, after entering politics, as was then the common practice. In 1881 he resigned from the Permanent Building Society to set up the twin institutions of the Federal Building Society and the Federal Bank, mostly investing in land, in which he invested himself. He was also a leading temperance advocate and prominent in the Presbyterian church. In the boom years of the 1880s, the idea of 'temperance hotels' that provided accommodation, dining rooms etc., but that did not serve alcohol, was taken up with gusto in Australia, where they were usually called Coffee Palaces, and Munro was leading exponent. In 1886 he was a partner in a company that bought the recently built Grand Hotel in Spring Street, and turned it into a coffee palace, and more than doubled its size in 1888, and he had major shares in at least five other large coffee palaces.
Political career
Munro was elected to the Victorian Legislative Assembly as one of two members for North Melbourne in 1874. In 1877 he was elected for the new seat of Carlton, then for North Melbourne again in 1881, where he was defeated in 1883. In 1886, he was elected as one of the three members for Geelong, retaining his seat until he resigned in 1892. Initially a liberal, Munro was Minister for Public Instruction in the first government of the radical leader Graham Berry, but became increasingly conservative in the 1880s and did not hold office in Berry's later governments. He was also preoccupied with business in these years, since his companies, the Federal Bank and the Federal Building Society, were leading players in the speculative Land Boom that gripped the colony. Unlike many of the Land Boomers, he had a reputation for stern Scots integrity, and as the Boom faded in 1890 he emerged as leader of the opposition to the government of Duncan Gillies. In November he moved a successful no-confidence motion in the Gillies government and became Premier — he was the third Scottish-born Premier in succession. Munro's government was generally liberal, but was weakened by the absence of Alfred Deakin, the leading Victorian liberal, who chose to concentrate on the campaign for Australian federation. It was quite unable to cope with the accelerating financial collapse which began almost as soon as it took office. The crash climaxed in early 1893 with the failure of a number of banks. Munro's own companies were part of the problem as the bottom fell out of the land market, and in November 1892 the Federal Building Society went into voluntary liquidation, with the Federal Bank closing the doors on 30 January 1893.
Financial ruin
In February 1892 Munro, who was deeply in debt, asked his Cabinet to appoint him Victorian Agent-General in London. He then resigned as Premier and immediately took ship from Port Melbourne. When the news broke there was a storm of protest, led by the many investors whose savings had been wiped out in Munro's companies. Eventually Munro's successor, William Shiels, agreed to recall him from London. To his credit, he returned voluntarily to Victoria, where he was declared bankrupt in February 1893, with personal debts of ₤97,000. His companies left debts of over ₤600,000 – a staggering amount at that time. A few weeks later he was attacked and beaten unconscious in a Melbourne street by a man who had been ruined in the crash.
Legacy
Munro has gone down in history as the most notorious of the corrupt Victorian politicians of the Land Boom period. The fact that he was an evangelical Christian who loudly criticised the morals of others has seen him branded a hypocrite as well. In fact it was never proved that he was personally guilty of corruption – unlike the four members of Parliament who eventually went to jail, or the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Sir Matthew Davies, who fled the colony in disgrace and narrowly escaped jail. His business practices were dubious, but usually within the very loose legal framework of business regulation of the time. After being discharged from bankruptcy he finished his days as an estate agent in Armadale.
