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a present. He had, in fact, already realized handsomely on many of his land purchases. He also denied the allegation that he was transferring his operations to Tinwald; the accusation though facetious, was not without point. He won by 111 votes to 49.

Williamson took his defeat with good humour. He declared that ‘though he expected to be beaten by Mr Bullock . . . he had not thought of finding himself so far behind his friend’.^[1] Two days later he was returned at the head of the list of candidates for the Borough Council. Those successful at the election were:

The second on the list was almost certainly the wittiest and liveliest man ever to enter Ashburton public life. Joseph Ivess founded the town’s first newspaper, the Ashburton Mail, in June 1877, and published at first twice then three times a week a four page paper expanded, when need arose, to six or eight pages. He was the most picturesque of all the ‘planters of local rags’ in New Zealand history. He had already started four country newspapers; he went on to a total of twenty-five in New Zealand and four in Australia. (His nearest competitor reached eleven). ‘A volatile Irishman . . . gay, adventurous, optimistic against every discouragement, aggressive, impatient, inconstant, he fluttered from province to province . . . planting newspapers right and left.’^[2] Administered twice weekly, his ‘mild mustard plaster’, as he called it, certainly stimulated social life and civic interest in Ashburton. Moreover, he was capable, as a refreshing contrast, of rising to a witty and learned defence of the virtues of a classical education, against an assertion that the best knowledge was of how to do one’s daily work. Ivess is important, too, because of his political ambitions. He fought parliamentary elections against some of New Zealand’s leading statesmen, he had been a member of the Nelson Provincial Council, he later held the Wakanui seat during two terms of Parliament, and he stood as a candidate for various constituencies until the end of the century.

Edward Saunders and his brother were now the proprietors of the local flourmill, besides having business interests in the town.