A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY - Mallacoota ...

The democratic activities and political progressiveness of townsmen,
economic buoyancy, the religion of socialism, and an indigenous nationalist
literature; all of these, then, served as determinants of a Utopian Dream. The
force which fused them, however, was the major impulse of nationalism. 1
Brady’s social and political doctrine embodied these ideas; it was his very strong
national sense and patriotism which gave them force as a personal creed for him,
motivating his political activities and his writings and giving force and direction to his
humanitarian and philanthropic impulses.
Perhaps as a necessary corollary of his socialistic views of Christianity, there was a
strong element of anti-orthodoxy and anti-clericalism in Brady, particularly in the
early stages of his political thought. So an early poem in Truth questions the very
existence of a God who could allow such sufferings and misery to exist as followed
from the social inequalities of the day. After ironically quoting the plaintive “God is
good” of the people as they are afflicted with various sufferings, he continues:
Oh, thou God, if God thou be’st, leave awhile thy realms of light;
Come and see thy Creatures groping in the shadows of the night.
Listen to the young ones wailing, watch their weary, aching sires
With the grimy, sweat-stained faces stooping over furnace fires.
Ere the sceptic passes from thee and thy flattered ear no more
Hears the hymn of adulation swelling up from shore to shore,
Oh thou God, if God thou be’st, leave awhile thy realms of light,
In this age of dying systems, come and manifest Thy might
Lest the world by Thought corrupted question much of Thine and Thee-
And, instead of “God is gracious”, whisper boldly “Liberty!”. 2
This must have been pretty heady reading to those who sought out Truth. It was one
thing to address the downtrodden and urge them to rebel; it was one thing to address
the employers and urge them to wake up or have a revolution on their hands; but it
was something else again to deliver an ultimatum to the Deity Himself, even to
question his very existence. The blow was somewhat softened by Brady’s use of the
small-lettered “thee” and “thou” when referring to God at the beginning of the poem,
while in the final address “Thee” and “Thy” are more respectfully used.
Abuses of the clergy came in for attack – those “parsons who pose as both holy and
just” and, in spite of upbraiding sinners, “will choir-maidens ruin to satisfy lust”. He
anathematised the hypocrisy of a minister who was charged with the setting up of a
bogus building society to fleece the public to whom he preached probity and honesty
on Sundays. He used his doggerel to give the accusation greater sting:
I’m a pillar of the pulpit and my reason – I’ll be frank –
Is because I am the Chairman of a bogus building bank,
For I read my little Bible, and I know that when I fail
I can prove a reputation what will keep me out of gaol. 3
1 T. Inglis Moore, p. 284
2 “The Dying Age”, Truth, 21.2.1892
3 “Brother Snuffledust”, Bird-O’-Freedom, 24.9.1892.
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