Cirrus@Austlit

The editor of the Sydney Gazette refutes the assertions of the Sydney Monitor that the Gazette has taken on the assistance of a joint editor. The Gazette's editor declares that the Monitor knows this assertion is a 'fib', but publishes it anyway.

Questioning the rationale behind this assertion, the Gazette asks: 'What are we to say of him who, knowing this to be a "fib," publishes it to serve a mean party purpose? Does he think that we need the assistance of a "joint editor" to encounter him? We can tell him that we do not, even had he a reinforcement of half a dozen other such Monitors at his back. We have several clerks and reporters in our office, and we certainly are indebted to each in turn for scraps of local intelligence, like all our contemporaries. If the Monitor has asssociated us with one of them, we plead guilty to assistance in our " light columns " but not even the editor of that journal (as we have already declared), clever as he may consider himself, shall ever have the honour of introducing any matter into our paper which has been previously approved of by us.'

In a lengthy opinion piece, the writer for the Gazette goes on to justify the newspaper's stance on the treatment of convicts in the Hunter district. He then concludes with a statement about the paper's writings regarding the editor of the Monitor: 'Once for all, we wish it to be distinctly understood that, as a public journalist only, do we advert to the editor of the Sydney Monitor. As a private individual, we have nothing whatever to do with him. In the one character, he is fair game; in the other, he is sacred from any observations of ours.'

The writer for the Gazette expounds on recent attempts to discover the identity of the person writing as 'Humanitas': 'To ascertain the author of the pamphlet signed 'Humanitas', we have had the fidelity of our compositors attempted--and since then, threats have been bountifully used to extort (as a protection for himself) the all-important secret of identity from another hired and confidential servant, to whom the writer was necessarily obliged to confide his name--that individual being now the manager of the printing department in this office.'

The Gazette's writer expresses the view that those who sought to identify 'Humanitas' 'doubtless thought that the writer would avow himself, in consequence of their puny threats towards a party whom, they think, is not able to protect himself'. That, however, has not been the case as the 'party' has friends who will protect him.

(A subsequent column in the Sydney Monitor indicates that Edward Smith Hall understands himself to be the person charged with being the alleged seeker of 'Humanitas's identity.)