A Singular Action.

At Melbourne recently, Mr James Scott, a solicitor of Richmond, brought an action to recover £200 damages from the proprietor of the Richmond Australian for having suppressed from the police-court reports all mention of the fact that he had appeared in certain cases. The notice of action was accompanied by this letter:—« Your continued, unwarrantable, and malicious suppression of my name as solicitor from your reports of the proceedings in the Police Court at Richmond for the last nine or twelve months (though I appeared on Wednesday last in three cases, some of which are reported in Saturday's issue) cannot, as tending to my injury and prejudice, any longer be tolerated. Further, in your issue of the 7th inst, in your report of the public meeting of the ratepayers at the Town Hall as to the loan, all the speakers are pretty fully reported, and all that is said with regard to my speech (admitted, as I am informed, to be the speech of the evening) is 'another speaker supported the resolution,' not even mentioning the name. Such reporting I can only characterise as being unjust, unfair, malicious, and calculated to lower and degrade me in the eyes of the public, and to prejudiciously affect my business in the district, and cannot be submitted to. » On behalf of the newspaper proprietor, application was made to Mr Justice Holroyd that the action should be dismissed as frivolous and vexatious, and as an abuse of the process of the Court. His Honor, in dismissing the action with costs, said that he did not know of any law which compelled a man to publish reports of anything.

A correspondent wishes Typo to recommend some good hand-books. —MacKellar's American Printer; Southward's Practical Printing; Crisp's Printers' Book of Reference. We expect a supply of these and other valuable trade books of reference at an early date.

About the time we published our article on the advantages of a systematic nick, a correspondent of the Inland Printer was making a similar suggestion. His proposal was that the figures I and O in old-style founts should be nicked differently from the small-cap I and O, as they are continually being mixed.

The newspaper contributor and his friend the comp are always coming out with unintended jokes. « The London Tribuner » for « London, Trübner » as an authority, is equal to « the French Source. » « The nefarious consequences of this pernicious habit » is a curious example of interchange of adjectives. « David in Solomon's armor » is a metaphor of startling originality—and incongruity. « He sent his man Home to make arrangements » is a fine example of ambiguity arising from the practice of dressing an adverb in the garb of a proper noun. « A nail in the coffin of the goose that lays them golden eggs, » from the correspondence column of the youngest Wellington paper, is worthy of the gifted editor himself. « Them golden eggs » is suggestive of the Jubilee singers. To these native specimens we may add a brilliant exotic from the New York Home Journal, which represented a learned judge as reserving his decision upon a certain motion « until he had seen the morning papers »—when he had really waited to see the « moving papers. »

Mr Ivess, in his election speech at Napier, said: « No man had done more for printers than he had. He had started newspapers and given them employment, and many a newspaper proprietor got his first start in life from him. » What the workmen think of Mr Ivess may be gathered from the resolutions passed at their meetings, and from many columns contributed to the daily papers during the past month. But he is regarded with equal disfavor by master printers—be is a veritable Ishmael of New Zealand journalism, as his reputation for libel actions abundantly testifies. Judged by his own test—that of the number of papers he has started—he has certainly done much for printers. If the multiplication of small and struggling country sheets and poorly-equipped job offices be a boon, Mr Ivess is a benefactor. In the same speech he said: « Two-thirds of the papers throughout Australasia were conducted with cheap labor such as he had described, and if they employed all men at £2 10s a week they would have to go through the Bankruptcy Court and suspend operations. » Making all allowance for exaggeration, the question naturally arises: Who but Mr Ivess and men of his stamp are responsible for this state of things? The man who establishes a business where a reasonable opening exists, takes a personal interest in the venture, charges fair prices, pays fair wages, and makes the concern remunerative, is a gain to the whole community. He, on the other hand, who engages in such unbusinesslike speculations as that of Timaru, and saddles his workmen with a share of the loss, not only does irreparable injury to his own trade, but indirectly to every other industry.