Also in attendance, sitting on rough benches upon the podium, are Melbourne’s founding Roman Catholic Bishop - now Archbishop - the Right Reverend Alipius Goold, together with Ballarat’s former priest, Reverend Father Downing, and his successor, the popular Father Smyth. Both Archbishop Goold and Father Downing look exhausted, and for good reason - it is said they have both travelled through the night to get here. It is also said they are here at the earnest instigation of the government to try to calm things down, though that is not sure. (And even the government is represented, though not openly, as Lieutenant-Governor Hotham has personally ordered a magistrate and two witnesses to attend, so His Excellency may gain a full and reliable report of the situation.)
Up on stage, Father Smyth looks worried, knowing far better than his superiors just how hot the mood on the diggings is and what risks happening from here and …
And hark! The first of the delegates is about to speak and give us news of the Governor’s response to our demands.
It’s shortly after three o’clock and at the invitation of the Chairman of the League, Timothy Hayes, the man of the moment, George Black, takes the stage, having only arrived back on the goldfields an hour earlier. His very appearance is greeted with three hearty cheers from the diggers, for there have been rumours that he and his two companions were arrested in Melbourne. Black is easily recognisable by both his height and long, flowing red locks, and the cheers build and roll across the diggings with such clamour that yet more diggers are brought to the surface. They soon wipe themselves down and make their way to join the assembly.
First up, Black informs the crowd that the delegation was courteously received by Lieutenant-Governor Hotham. He is, however, sorry to report that His Excellency strongly resented their use of the word ‘demand’ and was quick to note a general lack of courtesy in the wording of the statement.
Black’s words are measured and far from inflammatory - in fact, as a strong advocate of moral force, he is rather like a wet blanket on a field of dry grass that is just beginning to catch flame. In the estimation of that keen observer Carboni, the lean Black looks more like the deeply religious Methodist lay preacher he is by passion than the miner he has become by pursuit: ‘Conscious of having received an education, and being born a gentleman, he never prostitutes his tongue to colonial phraseology … From the paleness of his cheeks, and the dryness of his lips, you might see that the spirit was indeed willing, though the flesh was weak. The clearness of his eyes, the sharpness of his nose, the liveliness of his forehead, lend to his countenance a decided expression of his belief in the resurrection of life.’7
But this crowd is only interested in the resurrection of their demands. Sensing, perhaps, that their delegates have not been as strong with the Lieutenant-Governor as they had wished them to be, they stir restlessly as a field of wheat before the coming storm, while Black goes on. He does not wish to speak ill of Sir Charles Hotham, he makes clear again and again. As a matter of fact, he offers the view that, as far as he can personally tell, Sir Charles is in their favour. The problem is most likely that he is surrounded by many injudicious advisers, rendering him entirely impotent in matters of state.
Perhaps then the answer is to modify and moderate their manner of addressing the Lieutenant-Governor? That, at least, is the motion put to the gathering, one that is soon howled down on the grounds that it would be humiliating for the League if passed. One day they are ‘demanding’ and two days later they are ‘praying leave’? Absolutely not!
As frustration rises, the mood of the gathering starts to become more aggressive and strong-willed than the mood projected by those on the podium. The mass of diggers begin to overflow with emotion - it is outrageous that His Nibs has dismissed their demands in this high-handed manner. They want nothing more than justice, and he is now denying them that.
They must rise.
But no. Next up is Secretary John Basson Humffray, who also asserts that the Lieutenant-Governor is truly on their side and eager to resolve their grievances, even if he won’t overturn the convictions and the sentences of the innocent miners. That is why His Excellency has appointed a Commission of Inquiry, and Humffray himself is sure that once that Commission has made its report, the Lieutenant-Governor will ‘act accordingly’. Sir Charles told them that he’ll abolish the license fee if advised to do so by the Commission he has set up, and the Commission will surely advise exactly that. Hopefully they will be rid of the whole license system before long.
In his entire manner, Humffray stands out in this environment. A well-mannered gentleman from a good family, he is extremely well read and even better spoken, a deep thinker who - despite failing to make it rich on the Gravel Pit diggings - is actually far more concerned with the welfare of his fellow man. There is something of an air of vulnerability about him, a sense that he is a man who has given his best to making the world a better place and, despite being continually disappointed, persists regardless. Just like George Black, he does not use emotional language, just gives a clear account of what has occurred. He seeks not to inflame, only to inform.
But as the sun beats down and the temperature rises, not only do his carefully chosen words not match the growing outrage of the diggers, they are not long in telling him about it.
When Humffray acknowledges that he had, without authorisation from the Ballarat Reform League, a private meeting with Sir Charles prior to them being received as an official delegation, there are shouts from the diggers and dark looks from Kennedy and Black. They had not agreed with this meeting, either.
Together the diggers, as reported by The Ballarat Times, ‘denounced the conduct of Humffray as arising in this manner … unwarrantable, without its instructions and diametrically opposed to the … sentiments of the committee’.8
As a mass, the diggers’ anger grows at the realisation that their representatives simply have not pressed their case hard enough. These blokes just aren’t up to it! Humffray is so aggrieved by this reaction that he gives notice, then and there, that he intends to resign his office as Secretary of the Ballarat Reform League. No-one tries to dissuade him.
Standing down among the crowd, near the front, is Peter Lalor, struggling with his own rising emotions. He, too, is deeply frustrated by what he has been hearing from the podium. But should he get more involved than he already is?
Having grown up around his older brother, Fintan, he is familiar with high political passions, with taking the fight to the oppressors, with pursuing strong actions to change things. Yet, to this point, he has never been involved himself, at least not to the extent of standing on a podium to address the throng.
Perhaps he should do so now! That is certainly the view of one of Lalor’s Irish mates, James Brown, who is standing beside him in the crowd, now urging him to get up, get going, to say what needs to be said.
Take t’lead, Peter.
Should he …? Or should he stay in the background, keep his peace and let others act on his behalf? It is a decision he wrestles with. What he is certain of is that Brown is right: someone needs to step up to the podium to better express the mood of the masses, a mood that is in entire accordance with his own.
He stands there contemplating this very thing while another man is speaking, at least more aggressively, about the ‘daring calumny of his honour the Acting Chief Justice’, who had dared to stigmatise ‘as riots, the persevering and indomitable struggles for freedom of the brave people of England and Ireland for the last eighty years’.9 Should he join him? Get up and say his piece? Or keep his peace?
And now there is a new speaker, one who the broad mass of miners have not seen or heard much from before, though his name seems to be bandied around a little lately. I think it must be that Lalor fellow, Scobie’s mate, the one who first organised that meeting to try to get justice for the Scotsman.
‘Here,’ Lalor begins in his soft Irish lilt, ‘is tyranny as bad as that in old Ireland.’10
What they are about here, he says, his t
one rising, is democracy against tyranny.
The diggers hang on every precious word. The sun continues to beat down, the bottles and flasks of grog are passed back and forth and the speaker goes on. It is a heady day.
Not only do the people need to install democracy on the diggings and in the colony of Victoria, Lalor says, but the whole structure of the Ballarat Reform League needs to be both democratised and streamlined to become a more effective opponent of the government. And it is with this in mind that he now proposes his motion: ‘That a meeting of the members of the Reform League be called at the Adelphi Theatre next Sunday, at 2 pm, to elect a central committee, and that each fifty members of the League have power to elect one member for the central committee.’11
All those in favour say ‘Aye’ …
Aye! Si! Oui! Jawohl! Yaah! SI!
‘Lalor’s speech,’ John Lynch would later note, ‘had the merit of brevity, but went to the point at once.’12 The diggers liked the look of this new man a great deal. ‘For tall-talk and bluster he substituted moderation and common sense.’13
In the general acclamation of Lalor’s proposal, the Irishman’s eyes lock with those of Carboni, who has been positively wild in his applause for both Lalor’s speech and in support of his motion. He reaches his hand down from the platform and grips that of the Italian, pulling him up onto the platform to more properly talk amid the tumult.
The two know each other a little, and that morning Lalor noticed Carboni’s tent was a regular riot of representatives from seemingly every nationality on the diggings. All those with no great grasp of the English language crowded around to hear his translations of The Ballarat Times and Geelong Advertiser and tried to work out exactly what was going on. As Carboni has command of English, Italian, Spanish, French and German, this is an easy matter, and he is an obvious candidate to be an effective leader of those foreigners. Lalor invites him to speak, and Carboni does not have to be asked twice.
‘I came from old Europe, 16,000 miles across two oceans, and I thought it a respectable distance from the hated Austrian rule …’ he begins in his thick accent, adding a melody to words that English-speaking tongues say flatly. ‘I hate the oppressor, let him wear a red, blue, white, or black coat. [And so I call on you,] all my fellow-diggers, irrespective of nationality, religion, and colour, to salute the “Southern Cross” as the refuge of all the oppressed from all countries on earth.’14
His stirring words are greeted with thunderous applause as the meeting moves further and further away from the moderate tones of the first speakers and more towards armed insurrection. Indeed, his words are so impassioned that even Tom Kennedy - who had done so much to stir up the passions of the men after the murder of Scobie - thinks Carboni has gone too far and steps forward to usher him away from the front of the stage. It is only with great reluctance that the fiery Italian is pulled away.
But if Carboni can speak, then other foreigners want to speak, too, none more than Friedrich Vern, who roars that the diggers must take their licenses out and burn them, rather than giving in to this outrageous government.
‘Yentlemens,’ he says, his accent thick and only just comprehensible. ‘Go vere you vill, you meet mit der tyrann. Ze only way to meet tyrann ish mit der pistole in der handt!’15, 16 To provide a slew of exclamation marks to this observation, he takes two fully loaded pepperbox revolvers from his belt and fires off all twelve shots in the air.
‘To Arms! To Arms!’17 come the shouts from hundreds in the crowd. He has their complete attention. And Vern’s formal motion results in much subsequent discussion:
‘That this meeting, being convinced that the obnoxious license-fee is an imposition and an unjustifiable tax on free labour, pledges itself to make immediate steps to abolish the same, by at once burning all their licenses. That in the event of any party being arrested for having no licenses, the united people will, under all circumstances, defend and protect them.’18, 19
Father Downing, truly alarmed at the rising anger of the meeting, speaks strongly against Vern’s motion and proposes a moderate amendment to the effect that the licenses specifically should not be burned. Even though the diggers hear him out with barely restrained silence, he cannot get even a single one to second the motion. Another digger proposes that instead of burning the licenses, the men should simply refuse to show them, meaning they would have to go en masse to the Camp lockup, overwhelming the government’s legal processes. This, too, is howled down as being nowhere near aggressive and forthright enough.
The fierce debate goes on under the blazing hot sun, and Carboni notes ‘a peculiar colonial habit’20 taking place as a sly-grogger plies his trade, selling swigs from his black bottle to all present - even to those on the podium.
Father Downing could be forgiven for swigging deeply, so alarmed is he by what is being said. After the clergyman has finished, a person by the name of Fraser is granted leave to speak by Chairman Timothy Hayes. Alas, when this fellow also waxes moderation and the virtues of British law - unprotected by the clerical collar as Father Downing is - the mob reacts with a rage so strong that The Ballarat Times notes, ‘Were it not for the influence of the chairman and his numerous supporters, the man would have been torn limb from limb by the infuriated people.’21
The diggers have had enough and now they really do want to give the government a ‘lick in the lug’, and Fraser the same in the short term, but he is hurried away for his own safety. It is time for Chairman Hayes, thus, to put Vern’s original motion to the vote, and he chooses his words carefully, a man who has slowly come to the conclusion that it really is time to move beyond mere speeches.
‘Gentlemen,’ he says in stentorian tones, ‘many a time I have seen large public meetings pass resolutions with as much earnestness and unanimity as you show this day; and yet, when the time came to test the sincerity, and prove the determination necessary for carrying out those resolutions, it was found then that “the spirit, indeed, is willing, but the flesh is weak”.
‘Now, then, before I put this resolution from the chair, let me point out to you the responsibility of it will lay upon you. And so I feel bound to ask you, gentlemen, to speak out your mind. Should any member of the League be dragged to the lockup for not having the license, will a thousand of you volunteer to liberate the man?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ the diggers roar.
‘Will two thousand of you come forward?’
‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’
‘Will four thousand of you volunteer to march up to the Camp and open the lock-up to liberate the man?’
‘Yes! Yes!’ they roar even louder, some firing their pistols into the air to signal their wild approval.
‘Are you ready to die?’ he shouts, stretching forth his clenched right fist.
‘Yes, yes! Hurrah!’22
Dozens more take their guns and revolvers, point them skywards and fire deafening volleys of joyous shots. Others start two bonfires, into which they hurl their licenses, even as - in classic Chartist fashion - they pay two shillings and sixpence apiece and take proffered membership tickets for the Ballarat Reform League.
And so it goes. The mood of the miners is now one of sheer, eyeballs-rolling fury. As noted by Thomas Pierson, they are so upset that ‘formal declaration for Independence in consequence was made and nearly all determined to pay no more License’.23
But some of the men are contemplating taking even sterner action. Combined action. Armed action, if necessary. All of it is noted carefully by the journalists present, and even more carefully by those whose job in life it is to report back to the Government Camp just what the diggers are up to so it can be passed along to Sir Charles Hotham from there. Commissioner Rede will have the report within the hour.
But in the meantime, oh, how those licenses blaze, as the symbol of the diggers’ subservience to this government is now no more … no more … it is now no more …
Watching it all from the podium with giddy satisfaction, Hayes is moved - as he is often wont
to be - to shout out some lines from one of his favourite poems:
On to the field, our doom is sealed,
To conquer or be slaves;
The sun shall see our country free,
Or set upon our graves.24
There is revolution in the air, an intoxicating headiness. Together they are going to overturn an unjust regime, or at least the writ of that regime, in this part of that world. Had there been a bastille handy, the crowd might well have stormed it; a harbour nearby, and throwing crates of tea into it would have been a definite possibility. Oh, yes, many of the men on the field had been part of such rallies before, with the Chartists in Europe, replete with equally high-blown rhetoric. But then the Chartist movement had come to nothing. Then, in the face of government troops with glistening bayonets thrust forward, people had all backed down. But now it is different! In this land, far away from their homelands, the men are gathered once more to fight against the same injustice as before … but this time they’re not going to back down.
In their dozens now, they push to the bonfires and throw their licenses in. In typical fashion, it is not enough for Tom Kennedy to simply follow suit - he must do it in the most dramatic fashion possible. Opening his shirt to expose his chest, he dramatically cries, ‘Here’s my breast, ready for the bullets’,25 and then and only then, he throws his piece of paper into the flames.
The fires roar and so do the diggers. The bonfire smoke billows into the otherwise clear, blue sky.
‘It was at this time or thereabouts,’ digger John Lynch later astutely observed, ‘that the [moral-force Chartist and physical-force Chartist] chiefs separated. Mr Humffray wanted to still further try the efficacy of soft flattery and hard words in alternate doses. Mr Lalor, finding that there had been too much talk already and that more of it would only bring ridicule, resolved to try conclusions by the only means left when all others had failed.’26
And indeed, throwing their licenses into those bonfires was one of the only means left.
Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution Page 38