" faded away." A large proportion of the humbler class found it therefore difficult, and many of th impossible, to pay the town rate, and in this deadlock, the Council notified that all defaulters yvould he levied upon, and sold off. The Herald and Gazette newspapers boldly advised the people not to pay; and their proprietary endorsed the advice so given by not paying the amount due upon their own offices. Thereupon distress-warrants were at once issued against them, and types and presses distrained upon, but no one yvould buy.
The very unpopular officer, a Town Auctioneer, was necessitated, and thefirst" knocker down " of the kind was a Mr. William Barrett, a short-tempered, loud-tongued, blustering,fluffyold fellow, well-known in Melbourne and Richmond, where he lived to an advanced age. " Old Billy's " remuneration yvas two and a-half per cent, for a levy, and the like commission on a sale, but he did not make much out of it, and soon gave the office up in disgust, yvhen a Mr. Henry Frencham succeeded to a berth as uncomfortable as it was unremunerative.
The site for a Town Hall yvas often on the tapis, and a fruitful source of contention in consequence ofthe urging of various localities, mostly prompted by personal predilections or vindictive feelings. The tyvo-acre subdivision of the St. James' Church site, had a special attraction for the Kerr clique, not so much because of its suitability, as that it afforded an ever ready weapon with yvhich to worry, if not to wound, the Church of Englanders. It was dubbed " Parson Thomson's Cabbage Garden." To this plot it yvas reasonably enough contended that the church had no right, and that it had been seized on by a "fluke,"to which Sir Richard Bourke was privy. Several sites were talked over, and amongst them the spots where the Mint and the New Law Courts are erected. The Council also claimed a moiety of certain fees and fines, and the control of fees from the punts plying on the Yarra ; but their demands yvere ignored, always with a quiet contempt, and sometimes with but scant courtesy.
But a momentary outburst of sunshine broke from the dark and troubled sky, by
The First Mayoral Dinner,
Which was given on the evening of the 18th May, 1843, at the Royal Hotel. It was not only a Corpora spread, but also intended as a commemorative compliment to the introduction of a partially self-governing institution, conferred on the colony by a recently passed New South Wales Constitution Act, by which a Legislative Council was provided, and to which Port Phillip was privileged to contribute half-a-dozen members. The banquet was a god-send, though the limited number of invitations issued was the reverse of satisfactory. Still it presented a fair admixture of the official and social classes of the community, for there were gathered round the festive board, heads of departments, merchants, squatters, doctors, layvyers, and ministers of religion. But an unaccountable line yvas drayvn around the clerical invitations, for the senior representatives of three only of the religious denominations were included, viz, those of the Church of England, Roman Catholic and Presbyterian bodies. There yvere certainly no Wesleyans in the Council, and neither was there a Roman Catholic; but there were two Independents, and thefirstminister of religion that unfurled the banner of Christianity in the province, was the Rev. Mr. Orton, a Wesleyan. Hoyvever, the prohibitive circle was drayvn in a manner which provoked some well-founded jealousy, not amongst the excluded clerics, but their folloyvers. Still the " feed" yvent on, and in its way, yvas an enjoyable one. There yvere about seventy persons present, plenty of good cheer, a long list of toasts, and no lack of talk. The Mayor, though Chairman, yvas not much of a speaker, yet he got up a tolerable Address in reply to the Corporation toast, in proposing which, Mr. Edward Curr expressed it as his opinion that it had come too soon, for its birth ought to have been postponed for a couple of years, and even if that auspicious event had been put back until 1845, it would then have had some chance of becoming a success. Poverty yvas the great sin he had to lay to its charge, and he thought the Legislature ought to do something for it in the yvay of a presentation of ,£20,000 or ,£30,000 to start with, instead of the paltry ,£2000 or ,£3000 voted. There was one noticeable feature in the olden dinner demonstrations, yvhich in modern times seems to be altogether ignored (and the omission savours of an irreverence yvhich the ancients could not think of), i.e. the inclusion of "The Clergy" in the toast list. On this occasion it was given in a very effusive style by Alderman Mortimer, who declared that the Clergy of Melbourne were
