Australian Heroes and Adventurers

by William T. Pyke

"Let active laws apply the needful curb, To guard the peace that riot would disturb; And Liberty, preserved from wild excess, Shall raise no feuds for armies to suppress." —Cowper.

Another and greater grievance which daily stirred up strife between the diggers and the Commissioners was the gold-digger's license. The collecting of the license fee was from the first an invidious duty, which demanded a vast deal of tact on the part of the Commissioners and staff, for the diggers were always opposed to the tax, and many were the ruses they adopted to escape its payment.

The first skirmish in connection with this impost took place at the Golden Point, Ballarat. The diggers at the Point understood that no tax would be charged for the month of September 1852, as the Government wished to encourage prospecting on new gold-fields. But the Commissioners, on arriving at Golden Point, perceived by the general appearance of cheerfulness that the field was yielding good returns. Yet the diggers gave most evasive answers to their inquiries as to the result of the prospecting, and reminded them that the Government would forego the September tax. These artifices led the Commissioners to suspect that the men on the Point were more than ordinarily successful, and were planting their gains out of the range of the official eye. But an old pioneer named Connor failed to hide a pannikin full of gold dust, and its discovery confirming the suspicions of the Commissioners, they concluded that the community was prosperous enough to pay the tax, and thereupon announced that a license fee of fifteen shillings must be paid for the latter half of the month.

This proclamation aroused the indignation of the diggers. They held a meeting, at which a man named Swindells mounted the "stump," and denounced the sharp conduct of the officials. A deputation of two (the orator and a Mr. Oddie) were appointed to interview the Commissioners, in order to get them to revoke their decision. This the Commissioners bluntly refused to do, and the two representatives, after a wordy war, were compelled to retreat. The diggers now became exasperated, and when they further heard that Connor, the man whose carelessness was the immediate cause of the levying of the tax, had actually paid it, their wrath knew no bounds. They bonnetted him, pelted him with mud till he was almost covered, and would have proceeded to greater indignities had not Oddie and a few others curbed their unbridled feelings by referring to the grey hairs of the delinquent.

Notwithstanding this heated manifestation of ill-temper, the Commissioners enforced the license fee, and it was noticed, as is very often the case in popular demonstrations, that many of the most violent of the diggers succumbed the readiest under official pressure. But the last to give in was Swindells, so that when he did apply for a license his consistent obnoxiousness was remembered by the Commissioners to his disadvantage, and they refused to grant him one.

To recompense him the diggers, therefore, subscribed and presented him with 12 ounces of gold for his efforts on their behalf. Swindells afterwards went to Forest Creek diggings, and as a report came to the Point that a license was again denied him, the diggers asserted that the Government had determined to put a stop to his mining in Victoria because he had championed their cause at Ballarat.

On first hearing of the gold discoveries the Executive of Victoria had exercised their prerogative, as representatives of the Crown, to claim all precious metals found within the colony. A notice was issued forbidding anyone to dig for gold unless under certain rules, one of which was that the gold-seeker should pay a license fee of 30s. per month before commencing his search.

The colony, which was then in its infancy, was governed according to the Crown Colony system; but by the incessant arrivals its population so increased in numerical strength as to be almost beyond the control of the ruling powers. The Government appear to have been particularly puzzled as to their duties towards the vast irregular society upon the gold-fields. That it should be regarded as merely a migratory flight of population from the old centres of civilisation, which having swooped down upon the gold sown broadcast in the land, would presently return whither it came, carrying away the best of the gold harvest, was the idea which must have occupied the minds of the authorities, for they never attempted to make the gold-fields' population a part of the colony until the clamouring of the insurrectionists at Ballarat dispelled the illusion, and apprised them of the impolicy of delay in according a social status to the gold-digger.

The Executive of the day sought to solve the difficulty by the appointment of Police Magistrates or Commissioners, whose chief duty seems to have been the enforcement of the gold-tax act.

Now in the digging community were many factious adventurers, whose peculiar ideas of rights and liberties would have clashed with any form of government. These malcontents exasperated the Commissioners, and caused the power lodged in them to be used in its fullest extent. The police force were directed to keep continual watch on the fields, and compel the production of licenses as often as they pleased to ask for them. Even the prudent exercise of this authority would no doubt have been galling to law-abiding miners, for tax-paying, without the surveillance, is not as a rule congenial to the feelings of members of settled communities.