He lost his seat in 1913 and ended his public service as deputy president of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration (1922–1930).

He was born in the parish of Towednack, near St Ives in Cornwall, England, the son of John Sr and Mary Quick.

[1] His life changed when he was 2 when his family migrated to Australia in 1854, where his father, a farmer, began prospecting at the Bendigo goldfields but died a few months later of a fever.

Quick was educated at a state school in Bendigo and at the age of 10, he went to work in an iron foundry at Long Gully.

Quick was successful in parliament, and in 1886 was offered a ministerial portfolio by the then Premier of Victoria Duncan Gillies.

In March 1897 Quick won the second of ten vacancies in Victoria's delegation to the Federal Australasian Convention, outpolling Alfred Deakin.

In the Convention's proceedings, his voting pattern was characteristic of the radical strain within it, and more closely resembled that of Alfred Deakin's more than any other delegate.

While Quick was not born in Australia as was required for membership of the Australian Natives' Association (ANA) he nonetheless became a member of the Sandhurst (Bendigo) branch in 1882.

Partly on account of his shift to a less protectionist posture, George Reid made Quick chairman of a Royal Commission into tariffs.