Patrick McLoughlin (editor)

Born in Ireland, McLoughlin emigrated to the Cape Colony in 1861, as a sergeant in the 59th regiment, until he was discharged after suffering an injury that seriously damaged his sight.

Throughout his career, his writings and his editing were distinguished by their liberal and inclusive ideology and their concern over the rights of the Cape's Black African citizens.

[1] His free-lance writings came to the attention of the Cape Argus as early as 1861, and he soon became a printer's reader for that paper's parent company, Saul Solomon & Co., from where he rapidly rose in position.

McLoughlin had supposedly authored a pamphlet named "Pro Bono Publico" ("For Public Good"), privately and anonymously, during the 1878/9 Legislative Council elections.

In addition to several other anonymous papers which criticised leading figures of the British and Settler establishment, these writings were held to constitute libel.

This was in spite of strong support from his liberal friends, and from Saul Solomon himself who, in a personal letter to McLoughlin (30 June 1879) admitted that he found the termination "especially painful because it is occasioned by your having been placed in a position which I feel that, as an innocent man, you ought not to occupy".

One of the intended purposes of the Cape Post was to encourage a coming-together of the peoples and states of southern Africa in an organic and locally-driven process.

Chief among these, were the notorious "Koegas (or Kougas) murders", which led McLoughlin publicly to accuse the Attorney General Thomas Upington of racism.