Page:A dictionary of printers and printing.djvu/889

 seo

mSTORy OF PRINTING.

andpodean shores was the object of his constant ambition. Fortunately for him and the colony, that shrewd and active man, governor King, then at .the head of the executive, readily fell in with Mr^ Howe's wishes, foreseeing the salutary effects which the press, wisely conducted, could not fail to exert upon the crude elements of which the population was composed. A small supply of materials was accordingly procured from London, and on the 6th of March, 1803, being only fifteen years after the establishment of the colony, appeared the first number of the Sydney Oazettee and New South Walet Advertiser, a journal which has maintained its ground to the present day. At the outset, and for many years afterwards, the Garette was chiefly occupied with the ofl&cial orders and notifications of govern- ment. This circumstance at once stamped it wiih a degree of respectability, and secured for it as wide a circulation as the country could support. But, though thus patronised by autho- tity, the ingenious publisher had to contend with many difficulties, and was often driven to straits from which nothing but his own determined activity and perseverance could have extricated him. In those early times, the intercourse between Sydney and London was extremely tardy and precarious. Arrivals like angel-visits, were " few and far between." A ship or two, per annum, was the only link which connected the mother country and her distant daughter ; and then the passage was tedious beyond endu- rance, generally occupying the better part, not unfrequently the whole, ol the twelvemonth. Nor was there any thing like a regularly estab- lished trade or commerce. Now and then some solitary adventurer would bless the inhabitants with an " investment" — i. e., a melange of ill- sorted goods banished from the lumber-rooms of London, for the express accommodation of the good folk at "Botany Bay," — for whom, in sooth, " any thing was good enough ! " To none was this poverty-striken market a cause of greater embarrassment than to our worthy father of types. His press — his letters — ^his ink — his paper — and all the appurtenances thereunto be- longing, were ever and anon in woful need of being recruited. But he had nothing but chance, and his own dexterous contrivances to trust to. Many an anecdote have we heard from his son and successor, of the predicaments and hair- breadth escapes that long checkered his career, and of the adroitness with which he made the best of such up-and-down circumstances, He struggled bravely with them — and he mastered them. For eighteen years he continued to tug at the oar, till the last enemy of our race dis- missed him from his toils. But the evils and casualties here enumerated were not the only annoyances poor George Howe was exposed to. His paper, the idol of his heart, and the support of himself and family, was subjected to an abso- lute censorship ; and the censors appointed by the governor seem to have exercised their authority with great rigour and harshness. Proof- sheets were sent back so eorrecled that frequently

the editor could scarcely recognize his own sentences or detect a shadow of their original meaning. Paragraphs, essential to the proper understanding of the subjects he was treating, were mercilessly erased; and sometimes whole columns were annihilated at a blow. To the end of his life he used to speak with horror, and often with tears rolling down bis cheeks, of the hardships he had endured in this way.

In the present Gazette office, there is a tablet of white marble, erected by filial affection, bear- ing the following inscription : —

In memoir

of

Oeorob Boirir,

A Creole of St. Kitt's,

Bom 1789— Died Majr ii, igji.

Aged LII. He iotrodaced into Anstnlia

The art of Printiiigi

Iiutitnted the Sydney Gazette i

and was the

Fint Government Printer ;

t>esido which His chaiity knew no boonda.

If we have read this man's history aright, be is entitled not merely to a tablet in "a printing office, but to a public memorial in the best church in Sydney, or in any other place where the young colony may delight to honour its benefactors. He was succeeded by his son, who also is since dead. This young man did bis work well. His first three years were comparatively calm. He had no competition to contend with, there being no press but his own in the colony. Politics did not run high, for there was but one newspaper, and that fettered with a censorship ; free discussion wgs therefore unknown. The Gazette continued to be merely the vehicle of government orders, advertisements, extracts from English publications, and scraps of local intelli- gence. In 1823, however, sir Thomas Brisbane, who was then governor, informed Mr. Howe that the columns of the Gazette might be thrown open to public discussion of all matters of histoij concemmg the colony and its government. Unused as the people had been 'to the exercise of this almost forgotten right, there were not wanting men of sense and spirit to embrace it. We look back to this stirring incident with ■delight, for it was, in truth, the first dawn of Australian freedom ; and in little more than a year afterwards, — the censorship was no more. At the beginning of 1824,* Mr. G. T. Howe published his journal in a much improved and

— The star of liberty then rose over the press — never, ve trust, to set or be obscured. Id this year the legislattre council was lint incorporated ;— the colony receired his M^esty's new ciiaiter for the establislmient of courts of Justice;— courts of request were institated ;— the fint court of quarter sessions was held i— the Anstralian agri- cultural company was formed ; — the first chief Jufltice--tfae first attorney-general— the fint solicitor-gcnenl— the first sberUF— the fint master in chancery— the lint registrar nf the supreme court— the first colonia] treasurer, arrived ; and, to crown the whole, the press received its fref^om T This last triumph occurred in the month of October, vben Mr. Howe published in the Spdnen Gazelle an aAdal letter from the colonial secretary, aononnclne tli*^ *^ censonhlp had been abolished.
 * The year IBM wai truly an eventful year In Anatialia.

VjOOQ IC