The earliest extant copy known of the Herald is dated March 2, 1812. It was a paper 13 inches by 20½ inches, and contained four pages of four columns, which latter, in 1814, was changed to five. It started with a circulation of 170 subscribers, 150 being Montrealers. On its third anniversary the statement was given in the paper that the “weekly distribution rather exceeds one thousand impressions.” The price was $4.00 per annum. In August a larger sheet appeared, 15 inches wide by 21½ inches deep, and was divided into five columns, the editor calling his paper “a quarter larger than our former or any other paper published in North America,” and adding “The Herald has more circulation, probably by some hundred, than any other paper in Canada.” The enlargement of the sheet, which was followed by frequent supplementary sheets on a Wednesday, indicate the growth of advertising and commercial correspondence, and the immense increase of commerce after the peace. Indeed, at the time an attempt was made to establish a fourth Montreal paper, “The Sun.” Its promoters were Lane, a printer on St. Paul Street, and Bowman, a stationer on St. François Xavier Street. It only lasted a few issues. Anti-American animadversions, however, still survived. The democratic leaders of the time were accused of being supplied with Yankee money and Yankee ideals. Samuel Sherwood, an American by birth and an early leader for popular government, was accused by the Herald of having given traitorous support and advice to the Americans during the War of 1812 and of keeping the “Sun” and the Canadian Courant supplied with “Jacobin” information from American sources. A picture of the pigmy city of the period, written in 1870 by Mr. T.S. Brown in a small, forgotten pamphlet entitled “Montreal Fifty Years Ago”, may fitly help to illustrate this period: “On the 28th of May, 1818, I first landed at Montreal. On my left was a dirty creek running down inside of a warehouse, being the outlet of a ditch, now tunnelled, that then, as a part of the old fortifications, ran around the city, westerly from the Champ de Mars through Craig street, with dilapidated banks, the receptacle of all sorts of filth. Above and below there was a revetment of a few hundred feet; except this, the beach and river bank were in their natural state. Just above the Grey Nunnery there was a cottage with a garden running down to the river, and adjoining this a ship yard where vessels continued to be built for some years later. Further on, the place of the Lachine Canal was a common with three windmills and the graves of three soldiers shot for desertion. The Island Wharf was then a little island, far off and alone.