to them in this notice beyond giving the names of the individuals holding those offices. The First Auditors were the well-known Captain George Ward Cole, and Mr. William Locke, a merchant. The Assessors were:—
Lonsdale Ward.—Captain James Cain, and Mr. David Young. Latrobe Ward.—Messrs. James Graham, and Samuel Raymond. Gipps Ward.—Messrs. David Lyons, and James Montgomery. Bourke Ward.—Mr. William Mortimer, and Captain B. Baxter.
Of these ten persons only two—Messrs. Graham, and Baxter—survive.
The good behaviour hitherto shown by the newly-fledged Town Representatives, was only skin-deep. Municipal weather, hot and boisterous, set in, and these atmospherical conditions rarely, except at few and short intervals, changed. As Mr. Latrobe had truly remarked, the Council had no "bed of roses." The members had to do work of much difficulty, requiring patience, patriotism, energy, and disinterestedness; but the difficulties were manifoldly increased by the bickerings, brawlings, and squabbling imported to the Council table. Messrs. Kerr, Fawkner, and Stephen having newspaper and pesonal out-of-door quarrels, turned the Council Chamber at times into a disreputable bear-garden, of which the more reflective portion of the public grew thoroughly ashamed. To the turmoil within the Council two of the newspapers were potent contributories from without. Two cliques were formed, of one of which Kerr was the acknowledged leader, secretly and astutely helped by the Town Clerk; and there was what might be termed the Opposition clique, of which Stephen was the archon, assisted occasionally by Smith, Russell, James, and Dickson, but the last-named soon left them. As for Fawkner he was a regular firebrand, often absolutely unmanageable, grossly offensive in tongue, minatory in gesture, uniting the characters of bully and clown in such a manner as to render it difficult to say whether his conduct partook more of the one than the other. Fawkner and Kerr had the Patriot newspaper under their control, and Cavenagh of the Herald ground his organ in direct antagonism to them. Whatever course the Kerr clique took, it was cracked up by the Patriot, and roared down by the Herald, and vice versa. Dr. Greeves, not yet in the Council, the ablest man of the time, was editor ofthe Gazette, which had passed out of Arden's handsbut this much must be written of him that he was a veritable "trimmer," and did not do much harm, for if a trenchant article from his pen appeared one day, the next publication of the paper contained, if not a direct recantation, a re-hash so toned down as to make it the most innocuous namby-pambyism.
The Council primarily was the only local representative body in the district, but it sometimes diverged from its legitimate functions. The consequence was that in occasionally attempting to dictate to the Executive, the Council came into collision with the Superintendent, by whom the latter body was snubbed.
There were also other embarrassments, not the least being the want of money, and the Corporation coffers were in a sad condition of impecuniosity. Indeed, in the first half of 1843, the Council was in such straits in this respect, that it had not the funds necessary to pay current expenses; and at one of the meetings it was seriously proposed to discharge the overdue salaries by a subscription amongst the members. The significance of a proposal of this kind, may be guessed when it was well-known that some of the members' outfitters' bills were unliquidated for their official raiment. Grave doubts were also expressed as to the validity of the Corporation Act, by the very Judge Willis who gave such good advice on the "cold-beef sandwich day;" and it was even boldly stated at the Council table that several ofthe members who had sworn to the contrary, had never possessed the necessary property qualification, as to the truth of which, many who had good reason for knowing, never entertained the slightest doubt. The Council meetings, agitated by all those disquieting agencies, drifted into a chaos of abusive recrimination and utter disorder. It is only common justice to record that, in the midst of all this misrule, the Mayor a well-meaning man in his way, performed his difficult and irksome duty, if not with dignity, with impartiality and an independence for which even his most ardent admirers had not previously given him credit. The times in Melbourne were also very bad, for it was the middle of the financial crisis which raged in 1842 and 1843, when every branch of trade and commerce was at its lowest ebb, insolvency general, employment scarce, and money, like the fairy gifts of Irish fable, seemed to have almost totally
