Honours
Barton refused knighthoods in 1887, 1891 and 1899, but agreed to be made a Knight Grand Cross of St Michael and St George in 1902. (He was the only prime minister to be knighted during his term of office until Robert Menzies in 1963; various others were knighted after leaving the office; Sir Earle Page was already a knight when he briefly became prime minister in 1939.) He received an honorary LL.D. from the University of Cambridge in 1900.
In 1905, the Japanese government conferred the Grand Cordon, Order of the Rising Sun, and Sir Edmund was granted permission to retain and wear the insignia. The honour was presented in acknowledgement of his personal role in resolving a conflict concerning the Commonwealth's Pacific Island Labourers Act and the Queensland protocol to the Anglo-Japanese Treaty.
In 1951 and again in 1969, Sir Edmund was honoured on postage stamps bearing his portrait issued by Australia Post.
Read more about this topic: Edmund Barton
Famous quotes containing the word honours:
“If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter what the relationships consist in. If the novelist honours the relationship in itself, it will be a great novel.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“Come hither, all ye empty things,
Ye bubbles rais’d by breath of Kings;
Who float upon the tide of state,
Come hither, and behold your fate.
Let pride be taught by this rebuke,
How very mean a thing’s a Duke;
From all his ill-got honours flung,
Turn’d to that dirt from whence he sprung.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)