Sir Josiah Henry Symon KCMG KC (27 September 1846 – 29 March 1934) was an Australian lawyer and politician.

He was educated at Stirling High School, where he was the dux in 1862, before attending the Free Church Training College in Edinburgh.

[3] In 1866 he emigrated to South Australia and was employed as an articled clerk with his cousin, J. D. Sutherland, a solicitor in the city of Mount Gambier.

Later in 1881, Symon was made a Queen's Counsel, and on 8 December of that year he married Mary Cowle, with whom he was to have five sons and seven daughters.

In his highly technical argument he succeeded in having evidence from Hansard and Crown Law documents ruled as inadmissible.

Ash (who conducted his own defence) then turned to politics and law, and after his untimely death received glowing tributes from Symon.

He successfully stood as a candidate for the Australasian Federal Convention of 1897-8, and was on the side of the majority in 71 percent of its divisions; a higher percentage than the great bulk of delegates.

[5] In the subsequent struggle to win the support of the electorate for the proposed federal constitution, he was a significant behind the scenes player, sought out by Alfred Deakin, for example, to arrange funding for Federationist candidates in the NSW general election of 1898.

Prime Minister George Reid tried to intervene, and Griffith even took the extraordinary step of delaying scheduled sittings early in 1905.

Later, in 1930, when Symon was president of the Adelaide branch of the Royal Empire Society, he was an outspoken opponent of James Scullin's nomination of Isaacs as Governor-General of Australia.

In addition to bequeathing his library, Symon also left money for the establishment of scholarships at the University of Sydney, Scotch College in Adelaide and Stirling High School, which he had attended in his youth.

In 1907 he visited the Public Record Office in London while on a holiday, and campaigned for the logbooks of Captain James Cook's ships HM Bark Endeavour and HMS Resolution to be brought to Australia, in the same way that the log of the Mayflower had been taken to Boston in the United States.

[8] Symon had a massive personal collection of approximately ten thousand books, which he ultimately bequeathed to the State Library of South Australia.