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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 4
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« I pay for all, » is the motto of the producer, in « The Four Alls. » The protection knout has awakened the Victorian agriculturists to this forgotten fact, and the Farmers' Protection Society is declaring unanimously for free-trade. It will come, too, in time.
The Marquis of Salisbury's motion in the House of Lords is, to say the least, peculiar—we doubt if a precedent could be found. To formally thank a Bench of English judges for their « impartiality » is a compliment so doubtful as to border on insult.
The Wellington Times can boast of a penny-a-liner of the good old school. Witness the following Elegant Extract:— « It is a fact that purveyors of itinerant public entertainments abstract occasionally a great deal of money from the districts they visit. » It must surely have been by oversight that so vulgar a phrase as « a great deal of money » was admitted into so exquisite a sentence.
The « skeleton telegrams » from home are worse than Chinese puzzles, and are the source of daily blunders of the most ludicrous character. Our contemporaries are continually exposing each other's slips in deciphering the messages; but there is little to choose between them. An Auckland paper made Lord Hartington instead of Tim Harrington produce the alleged Sheridan telegrams in Parliament, and a Napier contemporary made merry over the lapse. But it forgot that in the same item it had made a more extraordinary muddle still in its own columns. It had incorporated the preceding item about Professor Owen's health being in a « critical » state, and evolved the following brilliant effort, which surely ought to take the « cake: » — « Professor Owen has made a critical examination of the cipher cable message, and he says it showed that Sheridan offered to disclose the whole history of the land league. »
The horse-leech again! The Wanganui Herald thinks that England's free-trade policy is a bar to imperial federation, and recommends Great Britain to « put on a duty—call it war revenue, and let it be devoted to the army and navy—of 5 per cent, on all foreign imports over and above the duty levied for revenue purposes. This would at once bind every part of the empire together in a federal bond of self-interest which could never be broken. » (!) Free-trade without invidious discrimination has given Great Britain the control of the the world's commerce—an opposite policy has brought upon the colonies more than seven years of ruinous depression, of which we have not seen the end. Imperial federation is an ignis fatuus. No one desires it, except some needy seekers after fat billets and gaudy titles. And lastly, a « bond of self-interest » is the weakest of all bonds, and can never under any circumstances, be lasting.
The journalistic profession in Australia (says the Wellington Press) are not behind others in forming associations for mutual protection and assistance. A Victorian Reporters' Association was formed a few months ago, and now its president states that it has the largest membership of any association in the colony. The inaugural dinner of the Society was held recently, and, the Age reports, proved very successful. Sixty representatives of the metropolitan journals were present, whilst the invited guests included representatives from Sydney, Adelaide, and Hobart journals. The president, Mr J. Tipping, of the Victorian « Hansard, » occupied the chair, and was supported on the right by Mr T. R. Roydhouse, of the Sydney Daily Telegraph, and on the left by Mr Just, of the Hobart Mercury. After the usual loyal toasts Mr T. Roydhouse proposed success to the association, and took advantage of the opportunity to express a hope that it would achieve its principal object of creating a harmonious feeling amongst the pressmen of Victoria and elevating the status of an honorable profession. The president, in responding, trusted that the time would come when they would be in a position, like similar institutions in England, to establish a fund for the assistance of disabled pressmen or their widows and children.
A contemporary suggests that references to the Times-Parnell business are out of place in a trade journal. On the other hand, we consider that any matter vitally affecting the liberty and independence of the press, is strictly within the scope of a paper dealing with printing and journalism. The Times has been the subject of secret attacks from a wide-spread organization, sustained by funds contributed chiefly in America and to a small extent in Australia. Because it endeavors to maintain the integrity of the empire, and has exposed an organized conspiracy against law and order, its enemies have resolved upon its ruin. No device has been too low to compass this end. Its trusted servants have been bribed to insert lines of obscenity in the midst of its Parliamentary reports, and have succeeded in doing so, not on one occasion only. One of these foul tricks alone cost The Times many thousands of pounds in calling in and suppressing the defiled sheets. The comment of the league papers—that decent people could no longer admit The Times into their homes—affords the only clue to the source and motive of the outrage. The league makes no secret of its tactics. It glories in suborning perjurers like Coffey, Molloy, and Sheridan, to furnish misleading information, and the time will no doubt come when it will boast that Pigott, in supplying the forged letters, was merely a tool in its hands. The Times is doing a good work, under enormous disadvantages, and at prodigious expense; and its opponents are endeavoring to undo the work of centuries in establishing the liberty of the press.