THE FOUNDING OF MELBOURNE 117 



acres, of which five only had been cleared for cultivation. An 

 interval during which he figured as a baker in Macquarie Street 

 appears likewise to have fallen short of commercial success, and 

 shortly afterwards he transferred his interests to the other side of 

 the island and settled in Launceston. Here he passed through a 

 series of business experiences, having been in turn a bookseller and 

 stationer, a baker, and proprietor of a timber yard, and finally 

 developed into the widely known landlord of the Cornwall Hotel 

 and the owner of the Launceston Advertiser, which he edited. 



With the publicity attaching to the position of proprietor of the 

 Cornwall Hotel, the bar-parlour of which became a sort of social 

 parliament for the district, and the influence he was able to exercise 

 through the columns of his paper, he soon entered upon a quasi- 

 public career, and plunged with zest into every controversial topic, 

 invariably taking the side of the people as against officialism. Long 

 as he was associated with the trade of the publican, he never fell 

 into any habits of excess, though it must be admitted that his 

 intemperance of speech was a full set-off against his abstemiousness 

 in other respects. He found sufficient stimulant in the active exer- 

 cise of his vigorous mental powers, and for some years he cultivated 

 and developed his capacity for rhetorical argument by practising 

 in the minor courts of law as a paid advocate, a position which in 

 those days, and under the exceptional circumstances of the colony, 

 was not restricted to members of the legal profession. The term 

 " Bush Lawyer " probably takes its origin from the practice of this 

 period, and amongst that fraternity none stood in more request 

 than the fearless Fawkner. Though entirely self-educated, his 

 omnivorous reading had included some excursions into the region 

 of law ; it had certainly raised him above the average of the com- 

 munity in general information. When it came to questions of 

 evidence, he was probably quite on a par with the magisterial bench, 

 and he had a pertinacity all his own, which declined to recognise 

 defeat. What between his outbursts in court and his thunderous 

 denunciations in type, the magistrates often fared badly in popular 

 esteem, and on one occasion an unusually bitter attack led to the 

 suspension of his license and the closing of his hotel. On making 

 a public apology in court, however, the suspension was revoked, 





