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Prospectus of the New Brunswick Standard and St. Andrews Commercial Advertiser
Sept 10, 1833
Prospectus of the New Brunswick Standard and Saint Andrews Commercial Advertiser
In announcing the intended publication of a newspaper under the above title, it may not be improper to state that the undertaking is unconnected with any former publication, and will be conducted on liberal principles.
The Editor considers that a newspaper, to be generally useful here, should be pledge to no party, but present a compendium of the opinions of the best prints on the leading topics of the day, from which a correct judgment might be formed of the various lights in which subjects are viewed by different political parties. This method it is his intention to adopt.
British, colonial and Foreign news, the policy and aspect of Courts and Countries, will be industriously collected and faithfully reported.
Passing events will be detailed as early as possible in order to enable the enquirer to keep pace with the general information of the time.
The affairs of new Brunswick demand peculiar attention and will be discussed with firmness and fairness. The vindication fo liberty will not be allowed to degenerate into licentiousness; but an undaunted maintenance of political rights will be carried the whole length by the Constitution.
The usual Lists relative to Commerce and Shipping will be carefully compiled; and whatever may be useful to the farmer, the lumberer, the trader, manufacturer, and fishermen, will be diligently sought for and inserted.
Polite literature, a taste for which has been successfully diffused by the periodicals of the day, will occupy a reasonable space in the Standard. And articles of wit or humour will occasionally find a place; but it will be the Editor’s aim to avoid frivolity and to adapt even light reading to the improvement of the mind and morals. The flowers of poesy, will be culled with a delicate and sparing hand.
Original communications will meet all the encouragement their merits deserve but detraction however high . . . on private character, however speciously cloaked—vulgarity of language, and any violation of decency, will be promptly rejected.
The strictest attention will be paid to the display of Advertisements, and in order to obviate the possibility of undue favour, it is intended that each continued insertion shall yield in place to that of more recent date.
The Editor refrains from dilating further on his views, being desirous of . . such professions and promises as cannot always be strictly . . . or satisfactorily performed.
Price fifteen shillings per annum—payable half-yearly in advance, exclusive of postage.
Subscribers may have their papers discontinued at any time, by giving the Editor notice of their wishes to that effect, as it is not the Proprietor’s desire that the Paper should be taken longer than the subscribers consider it useful; at the same time he hopes by rendering the print worthy of public favor to receive an extensive and permanent patronage.
The Standard and Saint Andrews Commercial Gazette will be printed on Super Royal Sheet and published every Tuesday morning by George. N. Smith
Additional Address
It was considered unnecessary to announce in the Prospectus of this paper, that it was not intended to give the name of the Editor to the Public, and consequently it was not requisite to assign the reasons for withholding it. Some of our friends have spoken of this step as a deviation from the usual course, and a questionable improvement. In reply, we beg to observe, that our examples are the oldest and best prints of Great Britain and the Continent. One person may be the Proprietor, another the Editor, and a third the Publisher of a newspaper; but the latter alone is the person properly ostensible to the public. A reader has only to do with the matter of a journal; and, if that possess the excellency which he looks for, it boots but little from whose pen it flowed. The personal appearance of an avowed Editor in his own columns, requires critical management, and is a situation which he can seldom assume to advantage. We aver not with what propriety the classic allusion of “genus irritabile” has been transferred from poets to Editors; but its general use goes to sanction the propriety of its application.
Our conviction is that the public are imposed on when the columns of a paper are presented to them full of the exchange of contending parties in mean innuendoes, foul aspersions, and unseemly abuse. We conclude this subject with the following extract from the N. Y. Evening Post of 29th July, which entirely coincides with our views:--
The Charleston Patriot speaks with proper reprehension of the practice which a good many of our newspapers indulge in of introducing the names of editors into their controversies, instead of confining themselves to the names of the journals they conduct. Such personalities answer no single good end, but are productive of many unpleasant and not infrequently of fatal consequences. The Patriot says, “neither in England nor France is the name of the editor of a political or literary journal ever introduced and blazoned before the world. It is unnecessary for the purposes to which it is usually made subservient. It may be made instrumental in exciting party odium against persons. Independently, then, of the want fo decorum in the custom, it deserves to be universally abolished.”
The New Brunswick Standard is published every Tuesday by George N. Smith
Terms: 15s a year, half in advance, exclusive of postage
Price of advertisements
First insertion of 16 lines and under 3x
Each repetition of Do 1s
First insertion of 17 lins and over, per line
Each repetition of Do do
Printing in general done on liberal terms at the Office, Rait’s wharf, Saint Andrews
Publisher George N. Smith
15 shillings per annum
Imperial Dept--British Legislation
-Slave Emancipation Bill
-Spinning Factories Bill
-Bank of England Bill
-East India Co. Charter
-Episcopal Church of Ireland Bill