Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/41

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ROBERT LOWE IN SYDNEY
9

to influence his fellows and "educate his party" by means of the newspaper press. On November 30th, 1844, appeared in Sydney the first number of the Atlas, a weekly journal whose principles he formulated and whose policy he practically controlled. The literary ability of the new journal was undoubtedly high, for among the regular contributors there were, in addition to Lowe himself, a number of aspiring young men who subsequently attained to the highest positions in Australia—such as the Hon. William Forster, Sir Henry Parkes, Sir Archibald Michie, and the late Sir James Martin.[1] All of these, as well as their leader, were at that terribly aggressive "missionary age" of twenty-five to five-and-thirty and were, of course, prepared not only to set Sir George Gipps and the local Executive to rights, but to readjust and rectify mundane affairs generally. The Atlas began its career as an open enemy, not only of the Governor of New South Wales, but also of the entire system of Colonial Government which emanated from Downing

  1. Perhaps a better proof could not be adduced of the literary ability of these contributors to the Atlas than the prominence justly accorded to several of them in Mr. Douglas Sladen's recently published anthology of "Australian Poets" (Griffith, Farran, and Co.)