and malicious recreant," to which the Herald responds that the Patriot is a "regular whelp of the genuine cur breed." And so on ad nauseam for several years. The first of the three papers to get into legal trouble was the Gazette, the Editor of which was convicted of libel, before the Court of Quarter Sessions, on 15th May, 1839, and sentenced to 24 hours' imprisonment with a £50 fine. In this prosecution the complainant was the Mr. Rucker previously noted as one of the two individuals who were instrumental in deciding the wavering mind of Strode, the Gazette co-proprietor, when he pondered on the Melbourne Wharf whether he should remain here or return to Sydney. The casus belli was a rent dispute between Arden and Rucker, and a caustic plaister by the newspaper man, which acted as the reverse of a receipt in full. The Gazette was embroiled in another kindred difficulty in 1840, for accusing the Chief-Constable ("Tulip" Wright) with having had bricks made for his own use by convicts in Government service, and further insinuated that the "Tulip" had appropriated a quantity of the same material from a Government kiln. On the 4th April Mr. H. N. Carrington, Wright's Attorney, applied to the Police Court to issue a warrant against Arden and Strode, the Gazette proprietors, for the publication of a libel. This was granted, and on the police proceeding to execute it on Arden they were obstructed by a Mr. Jamieson, the result being that both Arden and his friend were transferred to the lock-up, but enlarged on bail. The matter was afterwards amicably arranged.
Early in 1840 Mr. Fawkner retired from the editorship of the Patriot, and was succeeded by Mr. J. P. Smith, an attorney. Fawkner remained as proprietor, and was a frequent contributor to its columns, sometimes signing his full name, but oftener as "J.P.F." His father, who lived in Melbourne for a few years, was credited with the authorship of some wild, incoherent, though often pithy effusions, to which used to be suffixed the nom de plume of "Bob Short." Kerr and Cavenagh did not long continue. in amicable relations at the Herald, and Kerr passed over to the Patriot in the beginning of 1841, vice Smith, who betook himself to the more congenial rôle of Police Court practitioner. There had arrived in Melbourne a Rev. Thomas Hamilton Osborne, a Presbyterian minister from Belfast, the North of Ireland capital, who abandoned the pulpit and joined the "Fourth Estate" as Assistant Editor of the Gazette, from which he seceded after some time, and was succeeded by Mr. John Stephen, an early Secretary of the Mechanics' Institute, and in the future a Melbourne Alderman. Osborne's services were secured by Cavenagh for the Herald, which he joined towards the close of 1840, and so remained for a couple of years. In December, 1840, an effort was made to establish a comic publication, which was thus announced:—
FIGARO! FIGARO! FIGARO!
ON Saturday week will appear No. 1, to the continued weekly (with a wood-cut illustrating a certain character),
FIGARO IN MELBOURNE.
"Satire's my weapon."
Those who desire to laugh amidst the gloom of Melbourne will become readers of this publication, and those who desire to cry will shun the paper as they do the devil.
Subscription—Seven Shillings and Sixpence a Quarter; single number, Eightpence.
Office—Mr. Dick's, Jun., Collins Street; orders from William's Town to be left for the Editor at the Albion Hotel, opposite the Queen's Wharf.
Vivant Regius et La Trobe.
The first number of this embryotic Punch was to make its appearance positively on the 26th December, but the services of the literary accoucheur were never required. As it was never born, it could not have been said to have ever died.
In May, 1841, the Gazette announced its enlarged form thus:— "The proprietors confidently anticipate that its (the Gazette's) political principles, its material construction, and its elaborate management will place it above competition, and that as a literary, political, and domestic, commercial, scientific, nautical, pastoral, agricultural oracle it will be at once unrivalled and incomparable."
The next casus belli was the question of circulation, each contending that it had the largest, and sub leaders and paragraphs, letters from printing overseers, and even statutory declarations, were put forth in support of the numerical superiority of each newspaper. A few years after I had personally special facilities for obtaining reliable information upon this point; and so formed the impression
