transmuted into that of the Times, having Mr. William Kerr as Editor-in-Chief, and M'Combie as Assistant. After officiating in his new capacity for two and a half months Kerr abdicated the editorial chair for the Town Clerkship of Melbourne. M'Combie took his place, but on the 30th June the Times, née the Gazette, gave up the ghost, and its goodwill with subscription-list was purchased by the Daily News, née the Patriot.
The "Patriot"
Continued for some years under the editorial fosterage of Mr. W. Kerr, who knocked out the Fawknerian epigraph "Vincit Amor Patriæ," and displayed as his literary legend the John Knoxian quotation which still lives in Melbourne as The Argus motto, "I am in the place where I am demanded of conscience to speak the truth, and, therefore, the truth I speak, impugn it whoso list." In 1845 Fawkner was driven, by stress of weather, into the Insolvency Court, when his father, known as "John Fawkner, senior," purchased the paper, and Kerr's services were dispensed with. Prior to this time it had become a tri-weekly, and it now fell back to a bi-weekly. "Johnny" Fawkner was the editor, and queer work he made of it. Of his "leaders," it must be admitted that if they neither instructed nor edified, they most intensely amused, and as even this was a consideration, the good-natured people read, laughed, and affected to be satisfied. Fawkner was also a sort of spoiled child with the old colonists, and even those who thoroughly disliked him, and often repelled his ill-bred arrogance, were ever ready to concede a large latitude to the man who by common repute shared with Batman the honours surrounding the foundation of the Settlement. Batman was dead, and "Johnny" was not only alive, but poking his nose into every public movement, from Anti-transportation to Separation. The prestige that would have to be divided between him and Batman had he lived, was not unnaturally claimed by Fawkner, and as he had a finger in every pie, and was jumping about like a squirrel wherever there was anything astir, either at a fire or a public meeting, an election or a street row, a public dinner or a charity sermon, he was accorded a certain toleration which clothed him in a privilege that fell to the lot of no other man. His illiterate vapourings and ungrammatical jargon, his disconnected rhodomontade and unpunctuated rubbish, was consequently swallowed, until a special editor was secured from Sydney, in the person of Mr. James M'Eachern, a New South Wales journalist, and a writer of considerable power.
Kerr having received his congé from the Patriot, vowed vengeance, and started off to Sydney for the special purpose, as his friends gave out, of raising the wind for the establishment of a new daily paper. When he should come back and do so, the Melbourne journals might look out. Rumours to this effect so frightened the Fawkners (père et fils) that in order to forestall Kerr, they brought out their journal as the first morning newspaper in Melbourne on the 15th May, 1845. In June Kerr returned, but whether from a failure in levying sufficient supplies, or for some other reason known only to himself, his so much vaunted "daily" was to be curtailed to a tri-weekly, which he set about launching without much delay.
The Patriot continued under the Fawknerian régime until the 1st October, when Mr. G. D. Boursiquot became its proprietor, incorporated the Standard with it, and changed its designation to the Daily News. Under the new management it was worked at the least possible expense, and, as a vehicle of passing events, was insufficiently reported, and not unfrequently a rather inane sheet. Its assumed motto was the quotation, "To show the very age and body of the time, its form and pressure." Boursiquot, however, could write flashy, superficial, readable articles, at which he wrought hard, and so managed to keep the paper going, and wrung handsome profits out of it. In 1850 the newspaper proprietors and compositors in Melbourne had a large "bone" to pick together, the difficulty—no unusual one-being the question of wages: 8d. per thousand was then the rate of remuneration, and a competent "stab" hand received £1 15s. per week. A rise in both rates was demanded, and Boursiquot not only resisted, but retaliated by organizing a kind of cadet establishment, where "young gentlemen of education" would be instructed in the art of printing. This thing was managed rather privately until such time as the 'prentice boys were able to work, when the regulars would be summarily cashiered. A secluded cottage was rented in Fitzroy, where some type was mounted,
