Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution

by Peter Fitzsimons

  And yet, he asks, is this the way to proceed? Constantly signing petitions and passing resolutions, all for no result?

  ‘Moral persuasion,’ Thomas Kennedy says, with everyone leaning forward as before, to catch every word, ‘is all humbug. Nothing convinces like a lick in the lug!’86

  Hurrah! Exactly!

  Though not yet sure which lug, particularly, should be licked, a growing body of diggers are becoming ever more conscious that, together, they are strong. As the Geelong Advertiser astutely reports, ‘It is evident that the agitation is about to assume a new shape …’87

  2 November 1854, on the Ballarat Diggings, a breakthrough

  The news breaks on this very day: Sir Charles Hotham has buckled! No longer able to ignore the growing outcry coming from Ballarat - the editorials, the two petitions - asking for the release of the diggers arrested for burning the Eureka Hotel and complaining of the treatment of the priest’s servant - he has at last done something.

  ‘Notice is hereby given,’ the announcement runs, ‘that a board has been appointed by His Excellency to investigate all circumstances in connexion with the murder of Scobie and the burning down of the Eureka Hotel …’88

  As he explains in a despatch to London, Sir Charles - on the strong advice of Attorney-General William Stawell - has decided that after all the outcry it behoves him ‘to investigate the charges which poured in from all quarters, of general corruption on the part of the authorities of the Ballarat gold field’.89 And that Board of Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the burning of the Eureka Hotel is due to get underway this very day at the mercifully still standing Bath’s Hotel. It will be led by Sturt, who used to be Melbourne’s Superintendent of Police but has now returned to his old job as Melbourne’s Police Magistrate. He will be assisted by Ballarat Police Magistrate Charles Prendergast Hackett and the Chief Health Officer of the colony, William McCrea, who had previously served as a naval officer under the command of Sir Charles Hotham.

  Now, now the diggers feel they are starting to get somewhere.

  One of the witnesses to the inquiry at Bath’s Hotel proves to be Peter Lalor, who gives his evidence on 4 November with some difficulty, his voice straining to keep calm under the anger he so evidently feels.

  Speaking to the lack of justice delivered at the Coroner’s inquest into the death of Scobie, which has directly led to the burning of the hotel, his testimony is devastating. ‘While the jury were retired to consult on the verdict,’ he begins, ‘I saw the Coroner speaking to Bentley in a distant part of the room. Bentley had left the room before the jury returned. When they gave their verdict, he was sent for and the verdict read to him. The Coroner then said, “Gentlemen of the jury, you could find no other verdict.” Mr Bentley asked whether the jury did not exonerate himself and the character of his house from all suspicion. The Coroner replied, without appealing to the jury, that with the two witnesses in his favour, there could be no suspicion against him.’90

  This is only one of the many allegations of endemic corruption that the Board of Inquiry will hear or receive. One significant letter that is tendered claims the entire Government Camp at Ballarat is ‘a kind of legal store where justice [is] bought and sold, bribery being the governing element of success, and perjury the base instrument of baser minds to victimize honest and honorable men, thus defeating the ends of justice’.91

  And the principal problem remains unchanged.

  ‘Honest men,’ the letter further asserts, ‘are hunted by the police like kangaroos, and if they do not possess a license (too often from want of means of paying for one, as poverty is the lot of many a digger) are paraded through the diggings by the commissioners and police up to the camp, and if unable to pay, are rudely locked up with any thief or thieves who happen to be in the camp cells at the time - in short, treated in every way as like a felon.’

  It is signed ‘On Behalf of the Ballarat Reform League’92 by John Basson Humffray, George Black, Friedrich Vern, Charles Ross and the noted journalist for The Ballarat Times and Geelong Advertiser, Samuel Irwin. Another who is very strong in his personal criticism of both Commisioner Rede and Assistant-Commisioner Johnstone is the editor of The Ballarat Times, Henry Seekamp, something that Commisioner Rede takes a very dim view of when he finds out about it. Seekamp is not just a problem, he is an ever more troubling one - and therefore a problem that must be resolved.

  4 o’clock on the afternoon of 3 November 1854, Port Phillip Bay, Sir Charles Hotham’s ship comes in

  The cavalry has arrived! Well, perhaps not the cavalry, but certainly Sir Charles Hotham feels some sense of relief that on this day the good ship Empress Eugenie drops anchor in Hobson’s Bay and shortly thereafter begins unloading eight officers, ten sergeants and 167 rank and file Redcoats from the second division of the first battalion of Her Majesty’s 12th Regiment to join the 321 Redcoats from the first division who arrived a fortnight earlier. Sir Charles’s military complement is now complete, with as many troops on the ground as he could have reasonably hoped for.

  ‘The troops are very healthy,’ the Empire reports, ‘and the vessel presents an appearance of cleanliness and order unequalled by any troop ship that has entered Hobson’s Bay, and reflects the greatest credit on the commanding officer, and Dr Rogers, medical officer in charge.’93 This credit is doubled when the band of the 12th division occupies the orchestra at the Melbourne Exhibition over three nights and provides an entertaining program that included the ‘Polka Waterloo’ and ‘Polka Downshire’.

  7 November 1854, Government Camp, Ballarat, Commissioner Rede ponders an alternative way

  Well, the truth of it is obvious, is it not? The licensing system does not work, and it was never going to work.

  None other than Gold Commissioner Robert Rede feels so strongly on this point that, in response to Sir Charles’s private circular, he has been examining other ways of raising revenue. On this day, he commits his thoughts, black on white, in an elegantly penned letter, reporting that, alas, the alternative methods - including imposing a tax on the number of men employed on each claim or the number of people in each tent - won’t work either.

  ‘After giving the subject the most attentive consideration,’ he writes, ‘and talking it over with others who are capable of giving an opinion on such matters I must state that … the levying of a tax upon the inmates of a Tent could not be put into effect without a severe system of espionage which would be excessively obnoxious.’94

  He regrets the current system, noting that he could get by with a quarter of the force he now has, ‘had it not to act as a Tax gatherer. The miners have no personal ill feeling towards the Police but they detest the system, that is they detest the enforcings’.95

  In place of the odious license fee, might Commissioner Rede make several suggestions to His Excellency? He decides to do so and details his considered views that the best way to proceed is to have an export duty on gold, sufficiently low that it will not encourage smuggling; a stamp duty on the sale of lands, houses, horses and cattle; a duty on imports with the exception of staples; licenses for the sale of wine and spirits to be doubled; and a tax imposed on the largest of the goldfields’ ‘refreshment tents’, to all intents public houses.

  Whatever His Excellency decides, Rede affirms, in signing off, that he will remain Sir Charles’s ‘most obedient servant’.96

  Saturday afternoon, 11 November 1854, atop Bakery Hill,97 the dogs of war are heard to bark

  Roll up! Roll up!

  For though the gathering on Bakery Hill ten days before had been far from the mother of all meetings, it had at least been the mother of this monster. Bands play and flags of many nationalities are raised as, again, 10,000 diggers turn up to express their displeasure with the Government and solidarity with those who are trying to do something about it.

  Only minutes after the formalities begin, Timothy Hayes, with his ‘pleasing deportment, suave manners and good address’,98 is unanimously voted to the chair, while Joh
n Basson Humffray - the secretary to the committee established to raise funds for the trial of McIntyre, Fletcher and Westerby - rises to his feet and clears his throat. As soon as he notes how low the funds are for their defence, the hat is immediately passed round and PS45 6 pence is immediately collected.

  As the sun beats down, the oratory heats up as speaker after speaker denounces the authorities and a veritable sea of hands is raised in total support of four proposed resolutions.

  The first calls for the removal of a corrupt member of the police, Sergeant Major Milne, a move entirely endorsed by The Ballarat Times, while it also notes that Milne is ‘but the tool - the machine in the hands of the government that employs him’.99 (Milne is hated nearly as much as Assistant-Commissioner David Armstrong, of brass riding crop infamy, who last year had left the goldfields boasting of the PS15,000 he made in bribes and extortion.)

  The second resolution condemns the insolent language used by the authorities for ‘their unwarrantable assertions regarding the veracity of the diggers and the respectability of the representatives of the public press on the goldfields and their sneering contempt at an appeal for an investigation into the malpractices of the corrupt camp at Ballarat’.100

  As eloquent as ever, John Humffray introduces the third resolution, regarding formation of the Ballarat Reform League, explaining to his audience in his melodic voice the principles, articles and doctrines of this League, ‘which if approved, means we could act in concurrence with, and hold out the right hand of fellowship to all on the goldfields’.101

  Thus, this most important resolution is proposed by Humffray:102 ‘That this meeting having heard … the draft prospectus of the Ballarat Reform League approve of and adopt the same, and hereby pledge themselves to support the Committee in carrying out its principles and attaining its objects - which are the full political rights of the people.’103

  George Black, the strapping six-foot editor of The Diggers’ Advocate, takes up the torch of justice in seconding Humffray’s motion, telling the assembled throng that ‘our business is now to proceed to the shortest way to our rights … The authorities are now afraid of the diggers … Humanity has been insulted, now is the time to rise and act; to demand our rights; and the Governor if pressed, will yield’.104

  He is every bit as eloquent as Humffray and when the motion is put and passed unanimously, the declaration is made that the Ballarat Reform League is formed, whereupon it is christened with three cheers for Mr Humffray and one cheer more for the League, which goes on for a great deal of time.

  The fourth resolution expresses the meeting’s total lack of confidence in the honesty of the Legislative Council, and pledges ‘to use every constitutional means to have them removed from the offices they disgrace’.105

  In seconding this resolution with typical ardour, Thomas Kennedy is once again in full cry: ‘The day is come when we must speak of eternal brotherhood, and he who will not fall in with us, let him go away over the ocean.’ (Cheers) ‘Go to the Queen of England, a simple-minded mother far away from these her children and ask if the child sucks too long it will not injure both one and the other …

  ‘When next we meet we must have done something - we must have the lands opened, the franchise and representation and our license fee abolished, and the diggers must all look upon each other as brothers.’106 (Cheers)

  And now another digger addresses the meeting, taking direct aim at the Lieutenant-Governor, noting, as reported by The Argus, that ‘Sir Charles was a sailor, so was he, but he was not on board his frigate now. The diggers had made Victoria what it was, and were not to be put down. The ice was broken now. Sir Charles’s motto was “Lead on”, let theirs be “No surrender”.’107 (Loud cheers)

  Delighting in it all, notes the correspondent for The Argus, is the newly installed Chairman of the Ballarat Reform League, Timothy Hayes - watched proudly from the front row by his wife, Anastasia, with her babe in arms - who steps forward: ‘If their rights were not granted he would then say “To your Tents, O Israel” and he would if forced even go so far as to invoke the God of Battle.’108

  The stage is set.

  Prepare the bass drums for thunder.

  None of this, of course, is secret and all of the proceedings are closely watched by mounted troopers on the fringes of the crowd. Notes are taken and everything is reported carefully back to Commissioner Rede, including the highly troubling ‘principles and objects’ of this newly formed Ballarat Reform League:

  That it is the inalienable right of every citizen to have a voice in making the laws he is called upon to obey - that taxation without representation is tyranny.

  That, being as the people have been hitherto unrepresented in the Legislative Council of the Colony of Victoria, they have been tyrannised over, and it becomes their duty as well as interest to resist, and if necessary to remove the irresponsible power which so tyrannises over them.

  It is the object of the ‘League’ to place the power in the hands of responsible representatives of the people to frame wholesome laws and carry on an honest Government.

  That it is not the wish of the ‘League’ to effect an immediate separation of this Colony from the parent country, if equal laws and equal rights are dealt out to the whole free community. But that if Queen Victoria continues to act upon the ill advice of the dishonest ministers and insists upon indirectly dictating obnoxious laws for the Colony under the assumed authority of the Royal Prerogative the Reform League will endeavour to supersede such Royal Prerogative by asserting that of the People which is the most Royal of all Prerogatives, as the people are the only legitimate source of all political power.

  Political changes contemplated by the Reform League:

  1. A full and fair representation

  2. Manhood suffrage

  3. No property qualification of Members for the Legislative Council

  4. Payment of Members

  5. Short duration of Parliament

  Immediate objects of the Reform League - An immediate change in the management of the Goldfields, by disbanding the Commissioners.

  The total abolition of the Diggers’ and Storekeepers’ license tax, and a thorough and organised agitation of the Goldfields and the Towns.109

  There is no disguising the fact that there is barely the thinness of a cigarette paper’s difference between the resolutions of the Ballarat Reform League in 1854 and the Chartists of England in 1848 - and the previous two decades. The Chartists had been ruthlessly crushed back home, but now those aims have flowered in Australia and are being publicly expressed once more. This time, however, it is being expressed by a hardy group of men who swear that they won’t back down.

  ‘The agitators,’ Thomas Pierson confides in his diary, ‘seem determined to make Australia free.’110

  For all that, one who is not impressed is Raffaello Carboni: ‘What was the freight per ton, of this sort of worn-out twaddle imported from old England?’111

  Although the majority of the men at the meeting have voted to support the executive of the Ballarat Reform League, there remains a growing feeling among some of them, of whom Carboni is but one, that while the aims of the League are admirable, the chances that the Government will actually care about something so benign as speeches and resolutions are lower than the red belly of a black snake. Against that, there is no doubt that the League has the full support of The Ballarat Times behind it, as Henry Seekamp soars to the heights of his prose when writing about it:

  There is something strange, and to the government of this country, something not quite comprehensible, in this League. For the first time in the southern hemisphere, a Reform League is to be inaugurated. There is something ominous in this; the word ‘League,’ in a time of such feverish excitement as the present, is big with immense purport. Indeed, it would ill become the Times to mince in matter of such weighty importance. This League is not more or less than the germ of Australian independence. The die is cast, and fate has stamped upon the movement its inde
lible signature. No power on earth can restrain the united might and headlong strides for freedom of the people of this country, and we are lost in amazement while contemplating the dazzling panorama of the Australian future. We salute the League and tender our hopes and prayers for its prosperity. The League has undertaken a mighty task, fit only for a great people - that of changing the dynasty of the country.112

  Not surprisingly, those who lead that dynasty are far from impressed at such advocacy, and Commissioner Rede has no sooner read it than he encloses the article with another, even more outrageous article in the same edition - one asserting the people are ‘the only legitimate source of all political power’ - in a satchel of official papers to be sent to Lieutenant-Governor Hotham in Melbourne, recommending that Henry Seekamp be charged with sedition. After all, the Treason Felony Act 1848, which had been brought in after the clash with the Chartists in Great Britain that year, makes it a serious offence to ‘imagine, invent, devise, or intend to deprive or depose our most Gracious Lady the Queen, Her Heirs or Successors, from the Style, Honour, or Royal Name of the Imperial Crown of the United Kingdom … by publishing any Printing or Writing’113 and, in Rede’s view, Seekamp has at least done that.

  While these men of the goldfields may be rebels, they are a very particular kind of rebel, as attested to by the correspondent of The Argus:

  These Ballarat diggers are most extraordinary rebels. It struck me to remark particularly, and to enquire as to their conduct and observance of the Sabbath. Truly they have few advantages, precious little of the gospel offered to them, little either of education given; no wonder, indeed, if they were vagabonds. But, as far as I could hear or see, the greatest possible order and sobriety, the utmost observance possible, I may say, of the Sabbath, has characterised their proceedings. Clean and neat in their diggers’ best costume, they promenade over these vast goldfields, their wives and children in their best frocks too; but anything more calm or becoming or regardful of the day could hardly be witnessed in the best towns of even Christian Britain. How delightful would it not be to rule such men well!114