Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania for the Year 1916
Sensational events, such as the depredations of the bush rangers, the movements of the aborigines, murders, thefts, elopements, or the drowning of messengers while fording flooded streams. The weather occupies much space each week. We hear of settlers selling their wives in order to obtain stock for their farms we watch the rapid pro gress of horse-racing towards universal popularity; we learn that very big rats are swarming over parts of the island, biting children in their sleep and this informa tion is followed by an infallible recipe for rat poison. Per sons over seventy years of acre marry A tradesman away up country receives a draft for �20, and adds a cipher to make it �200. When charged with forgery, he admits the act, but justifies it by saying that when he was at school he was told that a cipher stood for naught, and so he considers it extremely hard that for nothing he should be charged with a capital offence As the paper ex panded from two to four columns, voluminous quotations from English and Sydney papers were inserted, the Eng lish news being four to six months old. The aftermath of i'vaterloo was recorded at great length; Napoleon and St. Helena formed favourite subjects; the fate of Murat and Ney was depicted with gruesome details, and en comiums on Wellington, in prose and poetry, were always welcomed. The people of Hobart were given dazzling pictures of the introduction of gas lights into London and on the death of any member of the Royal Family, the paper appeared with a deep black border. Columns of Hansard were reproduced when the House of Commons had been discussing colonial matters, and in the issue of April 5, 1817, appears a very interesting extract from the Report on the Condition of the Distressed Poor in Eng land. At that time the fears concerning French designs on Australia had abated for a time; but England. With her innate love of scares, decided that Russia intended to take up the ambitions of France. The possibility of a Russian descent on India and Australia was seriously dis cussed by English politicians and writers. Hence, when the Parliamentary Committee suggested remedies for Eng land's poverty and distress, it urged the importance of em couraging emigration to New South Wales and Van Die men's Land, for the purpose of populating the southern lands, and also to provide a point d'apymi against the encroachments of Russian aggrandisement. This section of the report was quoted at length in the Gazette as soon as the document reached Hobart. Apropos of this Russian scare, it is interesting to note that in 1823 the Gazette recorded the visit of two Russian.
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