‘Here we think is a good parallel for the digger,’ he posits. ‘The fisherman takes fish out of the sea and digger takes gold out of the earth. The latter uses the earth only in the same sense as the former uses the sea. Is the former ever taxed for the use of the sea? Does he pay rent for it? Legislation never stumbled into such an absurdity. On the contrary, it has generally encouraged the development of this branch of industry by offering a bounty.
‘If it were wise, it would carry out the same spirit in the case of the digger. The interest should be encouraged, not by a bounty, but negatively by the removal of whatever tends to repress it … Down with the [Gold] Commission! Down with the license-fee! Let the colony begin to learn that its prosperity, under present circumstances, hangs upon the working of the gold-field.’40
Saturday and Sunday, 26-27 August 1854, the great man and his good lady wife arrive in Ballarat
Quickly, now! Have you heard? The new Lieutenant-Governor himself is here! With his good Lady wife! And indeed it is true. At around half-past five in the afternoon, just after the heavy rain has ceased, His Excellency - who has come to the diggings in an effort to better understand the domain over which he rules - arrives from Bacchus Marsh, accompanied by his small entourage, which includes the delightful Lady Hotham in a carriage.
‘Is that the Governor, mate, with the four-and-nine [low-priced hat] and the white cravat?’ asks a digger.
‘No, you fool, that’s a Methodist preacher, that’s the Governor,’ his mate replies, pointing out the sinewy Sir Charles.41
His Nibs! Lord Muck! He is here, among us. And he’s said to be a good cove, too. Just a few days earlier it had been reported that while in Geelong, on his way here, he had told a roaring gathering, ‘All power proceeds from the people. It is on that principle that I intend to conduct my administration.’42
Hooray! That’s our kind of language, and this is the man who will see to our problems, most particularly on the subject of the license fees. He is the one who is going to put things to rights!
Once word gets out that it really is him, the diggers stream in from everywhere, eager just to catch sight of the man who embodies the power of the British Empire in these distant parts, a representative of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria herself. It is exciting, thrilling, to see his graceful form in the flesh, and though there is a sole cry of ‘Joe!’, no-one else joins in as full Vice-Regal reverence takes hold.
And the good Lieutenant-Governor and his lady are liked even more when, after taking the Sabbath off to rest and recuperate - for, of course, nothing ever happens on the diggings on the Sabbath - on this windy, cloudy Monday he makes his way around the diggings in his tweeds and mud-splattered shoes, frequently unrecognised and engaging many diggers in conversation. He seems so surprisingly humble for such a distinguished man. But there are issues that need to be addressed, and now is the time to address them.
While inspecting the process of puddling the rich paydirt coming out of Canadian Gully, Sir Charles is stunned by both the strength of the gold yield and the warmth with which the diggers welcome him and his wife. As to the first, the nuggets, by one account, ‘are as thick and perceptible as currants in a pudding, yielding as much as one pound weight of gold to a tub’,43 and he can scarcely believe the wealth these common men are generating before his very eyes.
Moved by the diggers’ welcome, Sir Charles asks at one point, ‘What can I do for you, my friends, in return for your kindness?’
‘Abolish the license tax,’44 comes one frank reply, at which point all the diggers break out cheering.
The diggers again address this theme a short time later when, at a shaft situated just behind the Ballarat Dining Rooms, Sir Charles must pause to politely take receipt of a petition from a crowd of diggers, whereby they express their dissatisfaction with the licensing system.
His Excellency hands it to an underling and then steps forward to speak. The men gather close - in their thousands by now - and hang on his every word.
‘Diggers,’ he says in his plummy English tones, ‘I feel delighted with your reception - I shall not neglect your interests and welfare - again, I thank you.’ 45
At the conclusion of His Excellency’s remarks, their acclaim is strong.
Hip-hip …
‘HURRAH!’
Hip-hip …
‘HURRAH!’
Hip-hip …
‘HURRAH!’
For now the diggers go well beyond being merely reverential and are positively adulatory. As the Lieutenant-Governor and lady Hotham make their way back to the Government Camp, the men outdo themselves in laying down massive slabs of wood - normally used to hold back the walls in their mine-shafts - upon the rough road to make it easier for the party to proceed. And, of course, all of the men have respectfully removed their caps and hats.
When the Vice-Regal party comes to a hole in the road that her Ladyship pauses before, a massive Irish digger, known to one and all as ‘Big Larry’, steps forward and - in a manner that Sir Walter Raleigh might have done, had he been three times the size, far from the civilised world and an illiterate stowaway - grabs Lady Hotham by the waist and steps across in one massive stride. ‘Hearty peals of laughter’46 break out all around, including from the Lady herself. Still not content, Big Larry then walks in front of the Vice-Regal couple, playfully but forcefully brandishing a switch all around him so that no digger may come too close to them.
For her part, Lady Hotham, a large watch on a gold chain hanging carelessly from her neck her only adornment, and at a momentary distance from her husband, turns to one rough digger and says, ‘Well, I declare, these diggers are, after all, fine hearty fellows: I shall speak to Charles to be kind to the poor fellows, when we get back to town.’47
It remains all in good fun, and for the next mile or so, even as they make their way towards the hated Government Camp - the place where too many of the diggers have had to proceed in chains - the party is met with cheers for the ‘Diggers’ Charlie’.48
After this, the diggers return to either their work or the hotels, where they raise a glass to Sir Charles’s health and success. He looks and sounds like a man with fresh ideas, who will be able to sort out their grievances.
‘V-e-r-y correct, that’s the style,’ writes a newly devoted digger to The Ballarat Times, ‘just like a leading man in a party who consults all his mates how the work is to be done, and then sets his head to work and plans the whole. Sir Charles is no shicer. Dear me! How he chats and talks to the men like one of ourselves; why if Mr Evans was here he’d draw his sword and order the rabble to “stand back”.’49
And even the paper itself is impressed, as it would note in its next edition: ‘A bold vigorous and farseeing man has been amongst us, and the many grievances and useless restrictions by which a digger’s success is impeded will be swept away.’50
Inside the Government Camp, meanwhile, Hotham holds a more formal meeting with Commissioner Robert Rede, who, if he does say so himself, has come a long way from the poor man who had only arrived in Australia two years earlier to try his luck on the diggings.
And now look at him! Honoured to be in a meeting with no less than a knight of the realm, the Lieutenant-Governor of Victoria. This representative of the Sovereign wishes to discuss many things, including the system of collecting the license fees and penalties for those who do not have licenses, and Rede tells him everything he can. It is Sir Charles’s particular desire that Rede turn his mind to how collection may be better conducted to maximise revenue before putting it all in a written report, and Rede assures him he will do just that. After all, Sir Charles reasons, with the kind of staggering wealth he has seen coming up from the ground, he is now convinced that the license fees are fair and says so to Rede. He then retires to join his wife for the evening, in the house designated to them, one originally built for the inspector of police, into which is now crammed ‘almost every piece of furniture to be found in the camp.’51
Eight days later, L
ieutenant-Governor Hotham and his entourage visit Bendigo, where, if anything, his welcome is even greater.
‘No less than 25,000 men assembled a league from the town to greet me,’ he reports to the new Secretary of State in London, Sir George Grey. ‘By force they took the horses from my carriage and yoked themselves instead, dragging it into town.’52
Here, too, it is true, they present Sir Charles with a petition protesting against the license fees, a petition that he promises to examine upon his return to Government House, though he is careful to note that as Her Majesty’s loyal subjects they must pay for ‘liberty and order’.53
The cheers from the diggers are perhaps a little more muted at this remark, but at the least it may be said that the diggers remain up-beat and heartily cheer the Lieutenant-Governor at his conclusion.
While the diggers are impressed with Her Majesty’s representative, so too is Sir Charles impressed with them, reporting shortly afterwards to Sir George Grey, ‘I found an orderly well-conducted people, particular in their observance of the Sunday, living generally in tents, having amongst them a large proportion of women and children; schools of every denomination, and people of every nation are on the diggings, and there was an appearance of tranquillity and confidence, which would reflect honour on any community … The mass of the diggers here, as on all the other goldfields, are true-hearted and loyal, and men who, if well treated, may be thoroughly depended upon … and are all interested in upholding authority and the law.’54
As to their ability to pay the license fees, His Excellency, in his report, has little doubt: ‘The miner of Ballarat must be a man of capital, able to wait the result of five or six months toil before he wins his prize.’55 And if the men could wait that long before a return, then it is Sir Charles’s view that, almost by definition, they are also men who would be untroubled by a small monthly impost of a ‘trifling’56 amount. Some say the squatters should be the ones who pay most of the massive debt inherited from the La Trobe government, but Sir Charles does not agree. The squatters form the rich elite of this society - part of Hotham’s own class - and it is obvious they would simply not accept being imposed upon in that way, either personally or in the realm of the Legislative Council, where they hold sway.
The merchants then?
Yes, Sir Charles wishes to revisit making up that difference by raising the import tariff, and once again considers imposing an export duty on gold - but those two measures are mere possibilities. What remains certain is that since only half the diggers are getting licenses, the obvious solution is to increase the license-hunts to ensure that all diggers are paying their dues to Her Majesty. He estimates that that will raise an additional PS400,000-plus per annum.
The only reservation Sir Charles has about unleashing his forces, however, is that his military eye has noticed something significant while on this visit it the goldfields.
If the worst does come to the worst and some kind of punitive military action is necessary, then, as he makes clear to the Secretary of State, ‘I deem it my duty to state my conviction, that no amount of military force at the disposal of Her Majesty’s Government, can coerce the diggers, as the goldfields may be likened to a network of rabbit burrows. For miles, the holes adjoin each other, each is a fortification … Nowhere can four men move abreast, so that the soldier is powerless against the digger, who is well armed, and sheltering himself by the earth thrown up around him, can easily pick off his opponent. By tact and management must these men be governed; amenable to reason, they are deaf to force.’57
But surely force will not be necessary? After leaving Ballarat, His Excellency and his entourage move on to Castlemaine and Mount Alexander, where their reception is even stronger and they are near ‘deafened by the shouts of loyalty’.58
13 September 1854, tension rises at Toorac
Victoria’s most senior administrative officer, Colonial Secretary John Foster, is just not sure about this new man. Whereas Charles La Trobe had always been of a consultative nature and journeyed each day to work out of the government offices, Sir Charles lives more in the manner of a prince in his palace, only leaving Government House a couple of times a week, and for the rest requiring all the government papers requiring action to be sent to him. He would read them and then write quick peremptory notes in the margin, giving terse instructions as to what should be done - ‘put aside’, as in ignore, is a particular favourite - and that would be it. For Sir Charles Hotham is a man who rose to a position of great eminence in the navy, where his orders were obeyed without question, in part because of his ability to follow orders without question. Consultation with people below him in the hierarchy is neither in his nature nor his background. The four-man Executive Council of which John Foster and his cousin, William Stawell, are a part is there only to advise the Lieutenant-Governor - they have no authority over him - so His Excellency is free to ignore them when he likes, and frequently does so.
‘I do not consider that he intended any personal slight to myself, by not consulting me,’ Foster would later state in evidence, ‘he seldom consulted any of his officers at all.’59 But it nevertheless grates on Foster. No matter, for Sir Charles does not much like Foster either. Just a week after arriving at Toorac House to such fanfare, the Lieutenant-Governor had been presented with a bill for PS600, the amount it had cost to put in elaborate furnishings and stock its cellars. Though he had paid it - by selling the furniture he had brought from England for a great loss - it had strained his relationship with his Colonial Secretary along with his finances. Hotham felt it to be a deliberate snub.
Of course, it is to be expected that the diggers will not be happy about the Lieutenant-Governor’s plans. But against that, Sir Charles really does have broad instructions from the Colonial Office that there is to be no more ‘yielding to intimidation’,60 and such an instruction came with the full understanding that ‘the question was not very likely to be settled without a fight’.61
And if that fight be bloody, then so be it. In his long military career, Hotham has seen his fair share of blood and is not averse to it. Hotham speaks with Chief Gold Commissioner Wright and gives the order that the license hunts be stepped up on the diggings to at least twice weekly.
Accordingly on this day, a circular - later described by Foster as ‘most injudicious’,62 though at the time it happens entirely without his knowledge - is issued on behalf of Wright to his Goldfields Department, instructing all supervisors on the diggings ‘that they are to go out not less than twice a week in search of unlicensed miners, and that their weekly diaries are to specify the number of persons found unprovided with licenses and how disposed of … Should anything prevent this being done, an explanation of the cause of hindrance must be given in the diary’.63
This is serious. The Gold Commissioners are to send their men out after the diggers and enforce the law, come what may, or their superiors would want to know the reason why.
Sympathy is simply not in Sir Charles’s nature. For it is not long after this that a petition comes across his desk, organised by the wife of one James Grant, a Ballarat digger who had been caught with a fully paid-up license but was still given a two-month sentence. Grant had bought it from a digger who was leaving Ballarat, and it had that person’s name on it. The petition, humbly enclosed for His Excellency’s favourable consideration, is signed by another 110 of Her Majesty’s loyal subjects of Ballarat. It is also pointed out that James Grant had not found gold for six months, that Mrs Grant is confined with child and their other children are ‘looking to her for the means of subsistence’.64 Surely His Excellency could take the case into his ‘merciful consideration’ and free James Grant? His Excellency could not. He writes across the petition, ‘Never interfere with sentences - culprit knew the law and risked being found out.’65
21-22 September 1854, the reading is grim in Government House
For a man about to make the most important speech of his public career, in the first meeting of the Legislative Council th
at he will attend, the morning’s newspaper makes most uncomfortable reading for Lieutenant-Governor Hotham … On the occasion of the Legislative Council meeting to pass the bill to send the draft Constitution to Britain for ratification, The Argus does not mince words: ‘Considerable interest is attachable to the present occasion, in consequence of the presence of a new Governor, of whom high hopes are entertained; and people will look with a good deal of anxiety for the enunciation of the measures with which he will commence the legislative campaign, and proceed to reduce to reality the favourable expectations which his various addresses have excited …’66
The problem with the Legislative Council, The Argus maintains, is that ‘a properly-constructed representative assembly … embodies public opinion, and really represents the people, and our Victorian Parliament does nothing of the kind.’67
If the morning’s reading is difficult for Sir Charles, the next day proves more ominous when he reads the reviews of his speech. To say the press is underwhelmed is not to do justice to their crushing sense of disappointment that Sir Charles has not even mentioned the most pressing issue of the day - the instability wrought by the gold rush and, more particularly, the recent protests against the gold licenses. He has given no real leadership.
The Argus is most forthright, noting that the general expectation of his speech was high and hopes were that ‘it would contain a candid, if not an elaborate, exposition of his general policy.’
‘But, unfortunately,’ the article continues, ‘Sir Charles has, in this instance, abandoned the straightforward, outspoken line of policy which he has hitherto exhibited. In this speech he has sunk the man in the Governor; and either distrusting himself, his audience, or his assistants, he has veiled his intentions upon great principles of Government, amidst a dry enunciation of a few of the measures which it is his intention to initiate.’68
Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution Page 27
