Cirrus@Austlit

The Sydney Monitor again expresses its agreement with the Rev'd John Dunmore Lang who wrote that 'generally speaking, it is unseemly for a person who was transported to this Colony for a disgraceful crime ... to conduct a newspaper'. However, it states that there were 'mitigating circumstances' when Mrs Howe appointed Edward O'Shaughnessy as editor.

The Monitor's writer (probably Edward Smith Hall) also notes the hypocrisy of Lang's behaviour. Hall asks: 'What name shall we give to that proceeding of the Doctor, wherein he at first buys a press and types, sets up a newspaper,and acts as compositor and Editor to it; and afterwards, to mask the transaction ... appoints as Editor and Proprietor, a person [Kenneth Munro] just arrived in the Colony without property, without talent, without connexions. What name, shall we say, after the alleged trickery of the Gazette, shall we give management of this sort?'