Cite: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2956017

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THE COURIER.

Strenue et Prospere.

HOBART TOWN, FRIDAY, JULY 9.

IN our supplement of Tuesday last we copied from the Gazette the official Abstract of Revenue and Ex- penditure for the first quarter of the present year, compared with the corresponding period of last year. The results which it presents are certainly satisfactory. The total increase of the revenue for the quarter of the present year, above that of the previous one, being £31,300 ; which, should the remaining quarters bear anything like a correspondence, will present an im- mense increase at the termination of the year. It is to be borne in mind, however, that this large increase is mainly derived from the sale of Crown lands ; but we nevertheless think there is a fair prospect of the realization of His Excellency's anticipation, that the revenue will, at the end of the year, amount to £200,000. The chief items of increase are in the sale of Crown lands, the Customs, Fees of Depart- ments, Post-office, and the produce of the Ferries, the latter amounting to £530. The increase of the Post office revenue is £138, of the Customs £853, in the quarter. Certainly this augura favourably of the ra- pidly growing commerce of the country, and must reconcile us to the transient depression under which the trade of the colony is at this moment labouring.

In the Expenditure there is a total increase of £3155. In all the departments there is a diminution of expense, with the exception of the Schools, where an augmentation of £458 has occurred, arising from the welcome extension of their operations. The chief items of increase are under the head of Miscellaneous, and appear to consist of various incidental expenses, including; £300, being two years arrear of the allow- ance of £150 per annum voted to the Mechanics'

Institution.

AN article from a Sydney paper respecting the ac- count we gave of the discoveries of the Erebus and Terror, immediately after their return to our port, has been diligently copied into the columns of the Review. It would have reflecled more to the credit of this journal if, before giving insertion to the charges which the article referred to contains against our veracity, the editor had taken the smallest pains possible in ascertain- ing whether the very positive Sydney writer were really so immaculate as he would make himself out to be, or we so very imperfectly informed, or so un- becomingly prejudiced, as to give to the public the garbled and inaccurate account which he attri- butes to us. Fortunately, however, we have it in our power to set both these worthies right : and while we can corroborate our former statement by those stubborn things—facts—we can satisfy the public that the Syd- ney writer either knows next to nothing of the track of the English ships, or—indulging an esprit de corps, probably most acceptable in his particular fra- ternity—has closed his eyes to the only essential por- tion of the question.

We stated in the account referred to, that the ships had found the observations of the French expedition correct, but that some extraordinary mistake must have be fallen the American calculations, as no land could be found for three hundred miles from the spot upon which they had described the existence of the continent they had discovered ; that the Erebus and Terror had actually sailed over the positions marked on their charts as land. Now our very accurate oppo- nent states, broadly and openly, that this assertion "is altogether false," and infers that we have received  

our information from certain "insensible and dis-   honorable" subordinates of the expedition. His words are—"There may be petty jealousies between the less   sensible, less honorable subordinates in both the Bri- tish and American services, and to such paltry feelings we attribute the effusion of the editor of the Courier, who has shown, in the article we have quoted, no small degree of gullibility." Now in the first place, we can assure our Sydney contemporary that whatever opi- nions his experience of American service may have led him to entertain, he knows but little of that of the British, if he conceives that any officer therein, however subordi- nate, would be at the disgraceful pains of adding to the fame of such an expedition as the one we are speaking of, by giving circulation to deliberate false- hoods. In the next place, we will show that our in- formation is of the first character ; with which asser- tion, if the writer in question be not satisfied, he will have an opportunity—if he really desires to learn the unwelcome truth—of testing our statement, by refer- ence to the charts of the expedition on board the ships, while they are remaining at Sydney.

It is indeed truly ludicrous to mark the serious air with which this Sydney Free Press writer proceeds to lay open the misrepresentations in which he imagines he has so cleverly caught us. Let the reader mark this intelligent navigator. We trust he is not of the American service he refers to. He gravely announces, that "We have now before us our school-boy Atlas ;"   and then with this—to him indispensable assistance—

he proceeds to state that "the Americans made land   in 64° 20' S. and 154° 18' E, and the English in 71° 56' S. and 171° 17' E. ; the latter thus being up- wards of seven degrees further south, and nearly seventeen degrees further east, than the former : and the sapient author then adds—"Yet although it is thus evident that they were on a different meridian of longitude altogether, the editor of the Courier says that 'they sailed over the positions marked as land   by the Americans.' " The editor of the Free Press should have remembered that he is only speaking—so far as the English expedition is concerned—of the actual position of the land discovered—it seems never to have entered his imagination, that on returning from this spot they might possibly have traversed the supposed region of the American continent. This he appears to have altogether lost sight of. He is right enough in his statement that they were, on the outward route, to the eastward of the imagi- nary land of the Americans. But the fact is, that upon their return, on coming again to the northward,

the ships sailed also to the westward, keeping between the parallels of 63° and 66° as far as 143° 30' E., the very situation of the questionable land, without dis- covering the slightest trace of it, although the weather

was fine and clear. There was not so much as a bottom with six hundred fathoms of line. We have seen Commodore Wilkes's chart of the voyage, in which the land is represented to extend easterly to the 166th degree of east longitude, in lat. 64° 30' S. In lat. 66° S. it is again marked upon the meridian of 161° 30' E. from, and over which identical position the Erebus and Terror sailed in every direction a con- siderable distance without the slightest indication of even a remote existence of land. Thus upon their charts appears a complicated series of tracks of the two vessels sailing over and over again the supposed land laid down by the Americans.

We have thought it indispensable to our own vindi- cation of the charge of disseminating inaccurate and partial reports, thus to refute in detail the representa- tions of the writer in the Sydney paper ; but while we trust this will be a lesson to him of the necessity he urges upon us, to be more careful in examining the matter he treats of, we at the same time beg to assure him that we are utterly unacquainted with the trifling envies and jealousies which are attributed to us in the article referred to ; and farther still, from ever dream- ing of impugning the honour or ability of the com- mander of the American expedition, while we have taken a pleasure in exposing the error and misplaced zeal of the writer in question, we intend all we have said to apply solely to the question his foolish statements

involved. That there has been some mistake about the land of the Americans is incontcstible ; nor is this a thing at all marvellous ; for it is well known how easily a de- ception is produced in those latitudes by combinations of ice and clouds, or various meteorological phenomena. The Americans did not land ; they brought but pieces of rock picked up upon the floating ice. The British did land, and established their discovery beyond all shadow of uncertainty. We feel satisfied that the Americans have been misled by certain appearances ; but we never did or could suppose, that officers of their high standing and respectability would think of making any representation, in the accuracy of which they did not firmly and conscientiously believe.

THE lovers of prescriptive absurdities may enjoy a treat by reading the accounts in the English papers of the solemnities of form and preparation observed in the late trial of Lord CARDIGAN in the House of Peers for an affair of honour with Captain TUCKETT. A deal of laughable absurdity was exhibited ; and as though modern intelligence were not adequate to so great a purpose, a Committee of the House was

appointed to dive into the wisdom of our ancestry for precedents of fashions proper to be observed, who, after duly cudgelling their brains, reported that the material preparations for so august an opportunity

were threefold :—

First.—That as the Queen did not design to attend the trial, there was no need to make preparations for

her.

Secondly.—That Lord CARDIGAN should sit on a

stool uncovered and admit four friends into the

House, with the mysterious precaution that two should enter in one direction and two in another ; and

Thirdly.—That agreat officer of the Royal House- hold should inform the Judges of the expediency of their being covered during the judicial ceremony re- gulated with so much care.

These propositions having received universal as- sent, a pause of some days was allowed, probably to recover their Lordships from the bewilderment in- spired by such preparations, after which a fresh meeting of the House ensued, whereat, after procla- mation of silence being made, the Peers are required to uncover themselves to hear the Queen's Commis- sion read by a supernumerary clerk specially called in aid of the ordinary clerks of the House. To grace this part of the observances a variety of official personages are introduced, who make three bows each on entering to different parts of the House, and retire with a triple more until the assemblage begins to wear the appearance of a figure dance, un illusion no wise dispelled by the entry of a stately couple, too familiarly designated in the English prints as "Garter   and Black Rod," who go down on their knees to hand a long stick to the Lord High Steward, which grave functionary, instead of applying it to their shoulders, as an unsophisticated observer would ex- pect, for their buffoonery, retains possession of it till the close of the performances, when he publicly breaks it in two as the most rational and majestic mode of informing the noble Lords (what they perfectly well knew before,) that their business is at an end. The same noble Lord, upon receipt of the stick, mounts cer- tain steps, accompanied, for some inscrutable purpose, by a purse-bearer, and in this position arraigns the noble prisoner, the supernumerary clerk kindly wishing his Lordship "a safe deliverance."  

Probably with an eye to this branch of the judicial forms, the Attorney-General, apparently a sober- minded personage, and something scandalized at such Mandarin and Dervish-like flourishes, apologetically observed in his address, upon there being "no living   memory to guide them," clearly giving it to be under- stood that his ministerial task of prosecution was an unpalatable one, "a greatness thrust upon him" against the stomach of his better sense. Still he conducted the process with skill and patience to the end, the main difficulty being involved in Captain TUCKETT'S christian (or unchristian) names—and hints were broached as to the necessity of an appeal to his godfathers and godmothers, or the parish clerk, to solve the point ; whereupon, the Lord High Steward considering the proceedings had attained too serious a stage to be partaken by vulgar ears, moved the ex- clusion of strangers, and the difficulty was got over without witnesses. There then arose a misgiving whether the Captain HARVEY TUCKETT challenged and shot by the titled criminal could be the same Captain HARVEY TUCKETT designed to be killed, maimed, or grievously wounded in the business—nay, Sir WILLIAM FOLLETT, with mingled wit and wis- dom, gravely contended that the whole evidence "rather led to an opposite conclusion"—and hereditary   astuteness staggered beneath the weight of such a

doubt.

We remember an admirable exposure of legal   absurdity offered to public notice some years ago in

a commentary upon the indictment of the notorious *Corder" for the murder of Maria Marten, whom,   in the course of a rigmarole of counts, he was charged with slaying "with a pistol of the value of five shillings held in his right hand and loaded with powder and ball of the value of twopence"—

again, with a steel sword of some other value held in some other attitude—again, by smothering with

a number of bushels of dirt of no value at all—

again, by a course of beating, thumping, kicking, and bruising—and finally by all the modes specified, and several others not specified, put together. In that case, however, substantial ends of justice were attained, and the public mind was indiffèrent to the absurdity of the process. Very different is the instance of Lord CARDIGAN, whose prosecution condemns itself, not more in shape than in essence. The motive was indefensible, being dictated, not by the necessity of visiting his Lordship's breach of the peace, but of punishing his regimental unpo- pularity. It was the more strongly marked with absurdity that the only person injured or sought to be injured by the projected manslaughter, was averse to the steps adopted for his reparation ; nay,

his very evidence could not well be solicited, lest (as Counsel perceived) it should fasten upon him- self the felony designed to be fixed upon his anta- gonist. While the principle of the proceedings was bad, the forms in which they were modelled were ridiculous and grotesque, and the result ren- dered nugatory by the obscurity of Captain TUCKETT'S sponsorial appellations, which had been published ten thousand times over in every news- paper in the British dominions.

Thus was this legal festivity brought to a close— thus was the offended Majesty of the Law appeased —and thus, at a sacrifice of some twenty thousand pounds, incurred in settling his estates from the chances of confiscation, did his Lordship realize the

Supernumerary Clerk's pious wish of "a happy  

deliverance.''

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