The New Zealand Railways Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 9 (December 1, 1936)
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When the Englishman came to New Zealand nearly a century ago for the purpose of colonisation, he brought with him the printing press and the materials necessary for the publishing of a newspaper. The newspaper had become even by then so great a factor in his life that he felt himself unable to live without it.
The first thirty years of colonisation saw the rise and fall of a large number of newspapers, especially in Auckland and Wellington. Most of these early journals were without any literary qualities and were, in the main, merely weapons in the stormy political fights that were waged in the colony in the 'forties and 'fifties of last century. The disputes between the New Zealand Company and the British and Colonial Governments led to stirring times for the press in Wellington, which not only assailed the Administration, which was situated in the north, but the northern colonists and press as well. The quarter-deck manner of Governor Hobson and Lieutenant Willoughby Shortland was in large measure the cause of the forming in the north of an anti-Government faction, which had its own newspapers, and was just as violent as that in the south. These papers usually assailed the Administration with such gusto that the authorities deemed it expedient to take extreme measures for their suppression.
In his “Story of New Zealand,” published in 1859, Dr. A. S. Thomson, surgeon-major of the 58th Regiment, says: “All the papers in the colony were in the habit of using strong language; indeed, savage scurrility supplied the place of wit, and harshness of expression the want of keenness. Many articles were actuated by personal feelings, but as some excuse for this state of affairs it is to be remembered that the press was the only check the people had on their rulers.” The measures at times taken to suppress the freedom of the press were such that they would be impossible under present day conditions.
In this article it is intended to give a summary of the newspapers which existed at the Bay of Islands and Auckland prior to 1870, the year in which the city's present evening paper was founded.