South Australian Register (Adelaide, SA : 1839 - 1900), Tuesday 6 January 1852, page 3


3 tuy ' or destruction of the Sjiuth Australian iBeguter. That passage in our columns which the Morning (Chronicle with such pointed inaccuracy describes as *' informing the public that the proprietor of that ?jotrBal was endeavouring to raise money,' consisted W Xh& following words : — ' We were already aware m the expectations entertained that the great ?quarters, Messrs. Anstey, Baser, Ellis, & Co., would come forward with an advance of some £1,000 to keep the paper in question alive for a certain time.' Such a burst of liberality on the part of the gentlemen promoters of the new paper would be but in strict accordance with the probabilities, nay with the very certainties, indicated by €he terms and the tenor of the entire JProspeetus. The idea of its being a loan to an individual' is excluded by the very arrangements announced in one of the quotations which we have given above from the Prospectus itself ; and m§st certainly it would have been the height of impertinence for us to have insinuated or imagined that the said £1,000 was an advance by way of loan to any particular person, when every circumstance led us to consider it simply as the first instalment, from the treasures of a devoted confederacy, of the funds necessary 'for the support of a daily paper which they had pledged themselvea to start. Having thus, as we trust, cleared ourselves from the unjust aud unfounded accusation of our daily contemporary, we must bestow a parting word upon another equally improper misrepresentation in his article of yesterday. The Morning Chronicle confesses to have felt extreme annoyance at our having been enabled to publish the form and regulations of the gold licences some says before they appeared in the Government ; Gazette, and its annoyance has found fresh fuel in our exclusive announcement that the Government purposes to take gold dust in payment of duties, land, &c. We need only remark that if our contemporary were to exercise the requisite amount of diligence, he would probably not fail I to acquire as early intelligence as ourselves. With respect toj the gold-dust and gold ingots branch of his dissatisfaction, we beg to assure him, that it was a matter of sufficient notoriety in our commercial circles, that the Governor had held consultation with the Managers of the Banks on the subject ; and, with respect to the elder sore, we also beg to assure him that due watchfulness on his part would doubtless have placed him in the like position as ourselves on that occasion. In a previous grievancearticle on the latter subject, our contemporary made several wild and unsatisfactory guesses as to the source of our information, and even ventured to express one very naughty supposition, viz., that we might have obtained it by 'fraud.' In consequence of our remarks upon such an unexampled impropriety, our contemporary is now pleased to admit, that ' the word l fraud1 may have been too strong,' and he accordingly withdraws it. But on the other hand, the withdrawal of that inadmissible monosyllable is immediately compensated for by the following passage ; — ' But when we wrote we forgot that the Advocate-General is one of the publishers of the South Australian Register, and it is to us now clear enough from whence the secret information of the Government movements are obtained by that journal.'. As to the absurd conception which is then indulged in that that hon. gentleman was the writer of* our Saturday's article upon ' Banks and Bullion,' we can take no notice of such nonsensical presumptions. But with reference to the allusion to the Advocate-General in the above extract, we beg to say that, although Mr. Hanson is one of the trustees and executors of the will of .the late Mr. John Stephens, he does not exercise the slightest interference in the conduct of this paper. We beg further to state that from the fact of Mr. Hanson being now a' member of the Executive Council, by virtue of his appointment by His Excellency to the responsible and confidential office of Advocate-General, we should deem it inexpressibly indelicate to seek from that gentleman any information on Government matters ; and it may not be improper for us, the Morning Chronicle having dared to make the above insinuation, to declare that the South Australian Register has never received, either directly or indirectly, one single iota of official information from the Advocate-General. We deem it necessary to apologise to our readers for occupying their attention at this length upon a subject which is mainly of a personal character. But, feeling that great injustice has been done to us, we thought it but due to those whose interests we represent to defend the Register from the calumnies with which it has been attacked, and to exhibit the true character of the motives which have influenced some of our capitalists to project and start another daily paper in opposition to it. We repeat that we have no desire to be provoked to return to the subject. ' . . ?

THE 'ADELAIDE MORNING CHRONICLE.'

The public must do the South Australian. Register the justice to admit that it is singularly free from any disposition to engage; in direct hostilities with its contemporaries, or to displease its readers by of

fensive personal allusions to the Editors of other Journals. It is only very occasionally that it has gone out of its way to take notice of some attack or misrepresentation respecting itself of a more than ordinarily virulent character on the part of anyothe^f the Adelaide papers. We had lately, it is true, to expose the unfairness and untruth of a distinct charge brought against us by the Adelaide Times, and still more recently to notice certain most unjustifiable misstatements made with reference to the pecuniary position of this Journal by the Morning Chronicle. . But we have no desire whatever unnecessarily to prolong a disagreeable subject, and we do not wish. to be driven to return to it again. We must, however, be allowed a word or two of explanation before finally bidding it adieu. ' The Morning Chronicle does us grave injustice in stating that we ' informed the public that the proprietor of that Journal, was endeavouring to raise money.' We did no such thing. The published Prospectus of the Morning Chronicle distinctly made known that ' a number of gentlemen favourable to the Grant attended a meeting held at the Freemasons' Tavern, on the 22nd September last, when a Committee was named to make preliminary arrangements, who, after due investigation, recommended the establishment of. a daily paper, to be called the Adelaide Morning Chronicle, and an adjourned meeting, held at the Freemasons' Tavern, on the 6th October, unanimously pledged themselves to procure subscribers, and generally to aid in promoting the undertaking.' In the next paragraph we find the gentlemen saying, ' In establishing this newspaper, its promoters wish it to be distinctly understood,' &c, &c. ; and further down they say, 'The editing, conducting, reporting, and general management of the Adelaide Morning Chronicle will be placed under the guidance of the most intelligent and active persons procurable, the expense being of minor consideration when compared with the importance of the objects contemplated.' In addition to which, the names of certain particular gentlemen are given, to wit, Messrs. John Baker, John Ellis, William Allen, William Paxton, and Andrew Murray, ' who are authorized to receive the subscriptions.' - Then follows an N.B. stating that Subcommittees had been formed, consisting of some dozen (highly respectable) gentlemen whose names are specified, 'for the purpose of obtaining subscribers' names' in the Districts of West Adelaide, East Adelaide, and North Adelaide respectively. The names of seven gentlemen are then enumerated who have been appointed a Committee ' for special purposes,' and, in conclusion, the name of William Paxton, Esq., is given as ' Treasurer. ' Under sucli circumstances as those above stated no person could come to any other conclusion than that at which we ourselves arrived, viz., . that a political party had agreed to maintain a special organ for the advocacy of certain views. In the face of the fact that the only daily paper besides ourselves had just subsided into a weekly paper ; knowing that, to use the very words employed in the prospectus of the projected Morning Chronicle, ' there are admittedly too many papers for the requirements of the people;' knowing from experience the formidable expenses of a daily pape.y and that no individual would at such a moment venture to embark his own capital in the establishment of another daily paper, when it is absolutely certain that not more than one daily paper can exist in Adelaide; knowing all this, and knowing also that the respected proprietor of the late South Australian must know it all as well as ourselves, we certainly did look upon the actual establishment of the Morning Chronicle as an attempt to carry out certain political objects, through the instrumentality of a special daily organ, by means of the pecuniary contributions of the monied men of the party ; arid that thus the undue influence of combined capital was being brought into action, to the certain injury and possible ruin of the South Australian Register, which we may say by the by is known to be carried on just now for the benefit of the bereaved feinily of the deceased proprietor. Had the advocacy of State Grants or of the peculiar interests of the pastoral magnates been the sole object of the projectors of the Morning Chronicle, it is obvious that they would have operated with more concentrated effect upon therpublic mind had they started a weekly journal instead of a daily one ; but the decision to Itart another daily paper cannot, under all the published ^circumstances of its origin, but wairant tne belief that one of the unavowed motives for it* esubliBhment by the parti* in qutstion w*- the