Alfred Deakin

"His nervous instability was painful, his poses perpetual and his vanity colossal."

"A splendidly built man of towering height but never unwieldy, with a high forehead, keen eyes glittering through his spectacles, strongly marked features, and manly address, his many charms of character and some powers of mind were ill conjoined. He was not only prejudiced even among the New South Welshmen of his day, but obstinate, eccentric and changeable. Converted from an ardent Free Trader into a strong Protectionist almost without an interval long enough to permit of baptism, he compared it, himself. to the miraculous conversion of St Paul."

"He had apparently no illusions, no passions and no pre dominantly great ideals. He had the official manner, imperturbable and impenetrable, which would have made the fortune of an ambassador in Bismarcks eves."

"He sought rest only in perpetual physical motion."

"In public life ... he had but one aim — his own aggrandisement."

"Though a Tasmanian born he appealed at all times to the narrowest Sydney and New South Wales provincialism by the pettiest and meanest acts and proposals. He was an anti- Federalist from the first, except upon terms which should ensure the absolute supremacy of his own colony as a stepping- stone to his own elevation."

"... his politics were a chaos and his career contemptible."

"Reid was neither federal nor anti-federal but either at need and as far as possible both at once. It is difficult indeed to describe so extraordinary a man without appearing to caricature him ..."

"Knowledge was his forte and omniscience his foible."

"He was timorous, changeable, inconsistent, erratic, gloomy and absorbed, then sparkling and excitable by turns, his fine face pale and puffy — his fine head rapidly turning grey — his figure growing too portly — his hand trembling, his eye restless, his demeanour that of one who drifted in and out of dreams and some of them bad dreams."

"He was petulent as a child, irritable to a degree at the least criticism, oscillating between apparently unaffected indifference to public opinion and the keenest appetite for its applause. The genuine indifference was that of a jaded man who has lost self-confidence and is thoroughly weak of will. His affected indifference was part of a theatrical pose he played with foolish ostentation. He was such a mass of weaknesses and wilfulnesses and insincerities that he leaned for support upon any who could win his confidence, which could always be accomplished by flatterers or intriguers."

"Sir Thomas was a man of business, stout, florid, choleric, curt and Cromwellian."