Edward Pulsford

Edward Pulsford (29 September 1844 – 29 September 1919) was an English-born Australian politician and free-trade campaigner.

Pulsford established a successful business with his father as commission agents in Yorkshire before moving his interests to New South Wales in 1883. There he became a vigorous campaigner for free trade, and was a co-founder of the Free Trade and Liberal Association in that colony, the body that would later become the machine behind the Free Trade Party. Although his attempts to enter the New South Wales Legislative Assembly were abortive, he was appointed to the Legislative Council in 1895 and served until 1901, when he was elected to the Senate. An uncompromising opponent of all forms of protectionism, following the 1909 Fusion of the anti-Labour forces he joined the Liberal Party only with reluctance.

Pulsford is also remembered for his avid opposition to the White Australia policy and other forms of racial discrimination. Whilst financial editor of the Daily Telegraph he attacked restrictive immigration laws, and he fought against the policy in the state parliament and later in the Senate, where he was one of the few to oppose the 1901 Immigration Restriction Act. This racial tolerance, combined with his opposition to women's suffrage, has led the economist John Hawkins to describe him as "probably the least racist but perhaps the most sexist member of the Australian Senate in its first decade". He received a private education and worked with his father as a commission agent; together they worked in Hull, Yorkshire, from 1870 to 1884. On 23 February 1870, he married Mary Charlotte Stainforth at Hull; she would predecease him.

Colonial politics

From its foundation until 1891, Pulsford was secretary of the FTLA, and became an organiser and ferocious pamphleteer. He received a prize for an essay on "The Beneficial Influence of a Free Trade Policy upon the Colony of New South Wales", written as a contribution to the 1887 centennial edition of the Year-Book of Australia. He was nevertheless nominated to the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1895 by the Free Trade Premier, George Reid.

Federal politics

At the first federal election in March 1901, Pulsford was elected as a senator for New South Wales in the sixth and final position, narrowly defeating fellow Free Trade and Liberal candidate John Gray. He continued his undiscourageable support of free trade and was one of the few senators to oppose the White Australia policy, describing "the whole of the inhabitants of Asia as [his] friends". Described by the Tribune as "the best living authority on Australia's tariff question", his pamphlet to the Cobden Club in 1907 attracted a favourable reception.

The Fusion in 1909 between the free trade and Protectionist parties to form the Liberal Party was difficult for Pulsford, who had "no faith in either the old Protection or the new Protection", and although he did join the new party, his support of any protectionist legislation would be "in order to show that all such legislation must be a failure". He was defeated at the 1910 election when the Labour Party won all the Senate seats in New South Wales.

Later life

Pulsford continued his support for the free-trade cause outside Parliament, and in May 1914 planned to establish a free-trade paper to be circulated around Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, a scheme that was abandoned following the outbreak of World War I. He revised his book Commerce and the Empire (originally published in 1903) in 1917, arguing that free trade was central to the freedoms the Empire was fighting for, and calling for free trade with Germany after the war. On 2 March 1919 he married Blanche Elspeth Brown at Neutral Bay, but he died later that year on his 75th birthday, 29 September 1919. Survived by his second wife and the three sons of his first marriage, Pulsford was buried at Gore Hill Cemetery after an Anglican service.