THE LATE EDWARD WILSON.

Globe, Volume IX, Issue 1226, 7 February 1878, Page 3

THE LATE EDWARD WILSON.

The Melbourne “Telegraph” gives the following particulars of this gentleman, whose death wo recorded a. few days ago : During tho last two years Mr Wilson had received premonitions of death by the repetition of one or two paralytic strokes. He was sixty-three Tears of age, and a, Middlesex man, having been born at Hampstead in 1814. He arrived in Victoria when about thirty years of age, having up to tho time of leaving England been engaged in tho Manchester, or, colonially speaking, the soft-goods trade. His first permanent settlement here was near Dandenong, where ho took up a cattle station in con junction with Mr J. S. Johnstone. In 1847 he purchased tho then two Melbourne newspapers, tho “Argus” and the “Patriot, and extinguished, or perhaps it would be more correct to say, included the latter with the former. In *1852, owing to the enterprise of Mr Wilson, who in the meantime had bought off all competitors, the “Argus” became an eight-page paper, tho gold discoveries justifying its being thus doubled in size. Perhaps the first historical epoch in the career of Mr Wilson and the “Argus” was tho persistent and able opposition that was offered to the landing of convicts in Port Phillip, ns undoubtedly the next was tho advocacy of making Port Phillip a separate colony. The amelioration of the diggers, and the stoppage of all transportation of convicts to 1 Van Diemen’s Land, were honourably, and wisely, and determinedly supported. The columns of “ The Argus also under the control of the deceased, was in the years 1853-4-5, the staunch and sincere leader of the desire of Victoria for responsible constitutional government, and for such land laws ns would fix a hereditary yeomanry on tho soil, under conditions just to the State and equitable to the graziers of the country. These facts only require to be disentombed from the forgotten pest to secure from the Victoria of to day a noble epitaph for tho deceased. In the year 1857 Mr Wilson returned to England, broken down in health. About two years afterwards he made the tour of Australia and New Zealand and returned to England much benefitted in health. Ho took a country seat, in the county of Kent, where he lived the life of an English country gentleman. Mr Wilson, however, never forgot the welfare of Melbourne, of Victoria, or of Australia, as his efforts in the cause of acclimatisation, his letters to the English Press, and his speeches at the Colonial Institute fully prove. He died full of activity, and crowned with tho respect and honour of his fellowmen.