TORONTO OP OLD. 531 



standing there conspicuously at the bar to listen for a while to a stream of Colonial Advocate 

 in the purest vein. After speaking against time, with an immense shew of heat for a considera- 

 lile while — a thing at which he was an adept — the scene was brought to a close by a ^eneraj 

 hubbub of impatience at the outrageous irrelevancy of the harangue arising throughout the 

 House, and obliging the orator to take his seat. The petition of the Bishop was then In due 

 form received, and he, with his numerous retinue of robed clergy, withdrew. 



We now proceed with our memoranda of tlie early press. When Fotliergill was dej^ved of 

 his office of King's Printer in 1825, he published for a time a quarto paper of liis own, entitled 

 tlie Palladium, composed of scientific, literary, and general matter. Mr. Robert Stanton, 

 King's Printer after Fothergill, issued on his own account for a few years, a newspaper called 

 The V. E. Loyalist, the name, as we have seen, borne by the poi-tion of the Gazette devoted to 

 general intelligence while Mr. Stanton was King's Printer. The U. E. Loyalist was a quarto 

 sheet, well printed, with an engraved ornamental heading resembling that which surmounted 

 the New York Albion. The Loyalist was conservative, as also v/as a local contemporary after 

 1831, the Courier, edited and printed by Mr. George Guruett, subsequently Clerk of the Peace, 

 and Police Magistrate for the City of Toronto. Tlie Christian Guardian, a local religious 

 paper which still survives, began in 1828. The Patriot appeared at York in 1833 : it had 

 jireviously been issued at Kingston; its whole title was " The Patriot and Farmer's Monitor," 

 with the motto, " Common Sense," below. It was of the folio form, and its Editor, Mr. Thos. 

 Dalton, was a writer of much force, liveliness and originality. The Loyalist, Courier, and 

 Patriot were antagonists politically of the Advocate while the latter flourished ; but, fighting on 

 the side whose star throughout the civilized world was on the decline, they were unequal to the 

 achievement of what they undertook to do. 



Notwithstanding its conservatism, it was in the Courier that the memorable revolutionary 

 sentiments appeared, so frequently quoted afterwards in the Advocate publications: "the 

 minds of the well-affected begin to be unhinged ; they already begin to cast about in their 

 mind's eye for some new state of political existence, which shall eff'ectually put the colony 

 without the pale of British connexion ;" words written under the irritation occasioned by the 

 dismissal by the Crown of the Attorney and Solicitor General for Upper Canada in 1833. For 

 a short time prior to 1837, McKenzie's paper assumed the name of The Constitution. A faithful 

 portrait of McKenzie's will be seen at the beginning of the first volume of his " Life and Times," 

 by Mr. Charles Lindsay, a work that will be carefully and profitably studied by future 

 investigators ia the field of Upper Canadian history. Excellent portraits of Mr. Gurnett and 

 of Mr. Dalton are likewiso extant ia Toronto. 



We have spoken once, we believe, of the Canadian Freeman's motto, " Est natura hominwm, 

 novitatis avida ;" and of the Patriot's, just above, "Common Sense." FothergiU's "Weekly 

 Register" was headed by a brief cento from Shakspeare : " Our endeavour will be to stamp the 

 very body of the time — its form and pressure — : we shall extenuate nothing, nor shall we set 

 down aught in malice." Other early Canadian newspaper mottoes which pleased the boyish 

 fancy years ago, and which may stiU be pleasantly read on the face of the same long-lived and 

 yet flourishing publications, were the " Mores et studia et populos et prcelia dicam," of the Quebec 

 Mercury, and the " Animos novitate teneho" of the Montreal Herald. The Mercury and Herald 

 likewise retain to this day their respective early devices : the former, Hermes, all proper as the 

 heralds would say, descending from the sky, with the motto from Virgil, Mores et Stii,dia et 

 Populos et Prcelia dicam : the latter the Genius of Fame, bearing in one hand the British crown, 

 and sounding as she speeds through the air her trump, from which issues the above-cited motto. 

 Over the editorial column the device is repeated, with the difference that the floating Genius herg 

 adds the authority for her quotation— Ovid, a la Dr. Pangloss. Underneath the floating figure 

 are many minute roses and shamrocks ; but towering up to the right and left with a significant 

 predominance, for the special gratification of Montrealers of the olden time, the thistle of 

 Scotland. Besides these primitive mottoes and emblematic headings, the Mercury and Herald 

 likewise retain, each of them, to this day a certain pleasant individuality of aspect in regard to type, 

 form and arrangement, by which they are each instantly to be recognized. This adherence of 

 periodicals to their native physiognomy is very interesting, and in fact advantageous, inspiring 

 in readers a certain tenderness of regard. Does not the cover of Blackwood, for example, even 

 the poor United States copy of it, sometimes awaken in the chaos of a public reading-room 



