Chapter VIII.
Fiat Fustitia, Ruat Coelum.
As an old Ballaarat hand, I hereby assert, that much of the odium of the mining community against red-tape, arose from the accursed practice of jumping.
One fact from the 'stubborn-things' store. The Eureka gutter was fast progressing down hill towards the Eureka gully. A party of Britishers had two claims; the one, on the slope of the hill, was bottomed on heavy gold; the other, some four claims from it, and parallel with the range, was some ninety feet deep, and was worked by day only, by three men: a fourth man would now and then bring a set of trimmed slabs from the first hole aforesaid, where he was the principal 'chips.' There was a Judas Iscariot among the party. One fine morning, a hole was bottomed down the gully, and proved a scheisser. A rush, Eureka style, was the conseqence; and it was pretended now that the gutter would keep with the ranges, towards the Catholic church.
A party of Yankees, with revolvers and Mexican knives—the garb of 'bouncers' in those days—jumped the second hole of the Britishers, dismantled the windlass, and Godamn'd as fast as the Britishers cursed in the colonial style. The excitement was awful. Commissioner Rede was fetched to settle the dispute. An absurd and unjust regulation was then the law; no party was allowed to have an interest in two claims at one and the same time, which was called 'owning two claims.' The Yankees carried the day. I, a living witness, do assert that, from that day, there was a 'down' on the name of Rede.
For the commissioners, this jumping business was by no means an agreeable job. They were fetched to the spot: a mob would soon collect round the disputed claim; and for 'fair play,' it required the wisdom of Solomon, because the parties concerned set the same price on their dispute, as the two harlots on the living child.
I. The conflicting evidence, in consequence of hard swearing, prompted by gold-thirst, the most horrible demon that depraves the human heart, even a naturally honest heart.—II. The incomprehensible, unsettled, impracticable ordinances for the abominable management of the gold-fields; which ordinances, left to the discretion—that is, the caprice; and to the good sense—that is, the motto, 'odi profanum vulgus et arceo;' and to the best judgment—that is the proverbial incapability of all aristocractical red-tape, HOW TO RULE US VAGABONDS. Both those reasons, I say, must make even the most hardened bibber of Toorak small-beer acknowledge and confess, that the perfidious mistake at head-quarters was, their persisting to make the following Belgravian 'billet-doux' the 'sine qua non' recommendation for gold-lace on Ballaarat (at the time):—