Move to Australia

In 1880, Glynn emigrated to Australia, initially settling in Melbourne. He struggled to find work as a barrister, but did find the time to publish a pamphlet on Irish nationalism. He eventually took up a position as a travelling salesman, selling life insurance and Singer sewing machines.^[1]

Glynn moved to Kapunda, South Australia, in 1882 to open a branch of the Adelaide law firm Hardy & Davis. His aunt Grace Wallsh had migrated to South Australia in the 1860s and was a member of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart. In 1883 he became the editor of The Kapunda Herald, a position he would hold until 1891. Glynn was admitted to the rolls of the Supreme Court of Australia in 1883 and bought out his Adelaide partners in 1886. He moved to Adelaide himself in 1888 and established a practice on Pirie Street.^[1]

Constitutional convention

Glynn in 1898

Glynn saw no merit in federation itself,^[3] but evidently perceived an attractive affinity between the federalisation of the United Kingdom by Home Rule and the creation of a federation of the six Australian colonies. Glynn successfully stood as a candidate for the Convention that framed the Australian Commonwealth constitution in 1897–98. He was regarded as one of the ablest authorities in Australia on constitutional law. He made major contributions to Murray River water rights, and advocated standardisation of rail gauges and universal suffrage. He also contributed a reference to God in the preamble to the Australian Constitution. He unsuccessfully sought to have the Chief Justices of the Supreme Courts of the states made ex officio members of the projected High Court.^[4] He protested the Constitution licensing the first Governor General to appoint a prime minister and cabinet prior to the first election as "opposed to all our notions of parliamentary government".^[5]

In the struggle over question of Federation in Western Australia, Glynn with some deviousness secretly drafted a petition, signed by 28,000, which implored the British government to carve out of the goldfields a new colony, 'Auralia'. Such a new colony would not serve Federation but its possibility was judged by Federationist strategists as likely to induce some Western Australians to support joining the new Commonwealth.^[6]

First federal election

Glynn in profile

In the lead up to the inaugural federal election, Glynn acted as the informal deputy leader of the Free Trade Party and managed the Free Trade election campaigns in South Australia and Western Australia, while Free Trade leader George Reid oversaw the rest of Australia.^[7] As a result, Glynn was not only comfortably elected to the single statewide Division of South Australia but, together with Reid, he is said to have "created Australia's first national political campaign".

Government minister

At the 1903 election, the statewide constituency was abolished and Glynn was returned unopposed in the Division of Angas. He was re-elected on five further occasions, and was unopposed at three consecutive elections (1910, 1913 and 1914).

Despite his ties with Reid, Glynn was not offered a place in the Reid government (1904–1905). He joined the new Liberal Party after the 1909 "fusion" with the Protectionists, and subsequently served as Attorney-General under Alfred Deakin from 1909 to 1910. He returned to ministerial office in 1913 as Minister for External Affairs in the Cook government, holding the position until the government's defeat at the 1914 election. In 1917, the Liberals merged with Prime Minister Billy Hughes' National Labor Party, forming the Nationalist Party. Glynn's final ministerial post was as Minister for Home and Territories from 1917 until his defeat at the 1919 election. In that capacity he handled the Darwin rebellion of 1918.