Eureka - The Unfinished Revolution (40 page)

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”.’

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.’

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.’

Eight days later, Lieutenant-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.’

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’.

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.’

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.’ 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’ 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 £400,000-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.’

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’.

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.’ 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 £600, 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’, and such an instruction came with the full understanding that ‘the question was not very likely to be settled without a fight’.

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’, 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’.

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’. Surely His Excellency could take the case into his ‘merciful consideration’ and free James Grant? His Excellency could not. He writes across the petition, ‘Ne
ver interfere with sentences – culprit knew the law and risked being found out.’

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 that 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 . . . ‘

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.’

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.’

The
Geelong Advertiser
is rather more to the point, commenting dryly, ‘The much abused La Trobe might have delivered Sir Charles Hotham’s speech.’

Now that
is
a low blow.

And the paper also takes direct aim at Sir Charles’s ramblings on one issue that is foremost in the public mind, the fact that the colony’s best land has long ago been settled by the very people who are his most outspoken supporters, the ones in firm control of the political process – the squatters – thus denying others the chance to buy it. Worse, the laws framed by those squatting interests are such that most of the best land available can usually only be bought in large, expensive lots, cutting out the common man. The limited number of small parcels that are put on the market are sold by auction and fetch ludicrously inflated prices, thus thwarting ‘the strong desire of immigrants to locate themselves on the lands of the colony’.

30 September 1854, Ballarat brews

Ballarat is starting to take an equally dim view of the new Lieutenant-Governor, who had promised everything and delivered not too far north of nothing. Writing in the mighty
Ballarat Times
,
Seekamp is strong in his condemnation of the government of Sir Charles Hotham. For despite the Englishman’s protestations that he wishes to give the diggers a fair go and look after their interests, the truth is that Sir Charles has secretly ordered the police to ‘prosecute the obnoxious inquisition for the license fees’.

And it is certainly true that something is going on. To this point, license searches have only been conducted on the goldfields once a month, if that. But somewhere, someone must have given an order to increase the frequency, for suddenly such searches have increased eight-fold. At least twice every week the troopers are swoopers. Inevitably they catch many men who are without the requisite piece of paper, who are marched off to the cell like common criminals. And the diggers’ bitter protestations have no effect!