A Commoner
Practice Still Is For Examiners Of Gold-Dust To Cultivate Long
Finger-Nails, And, In Drawing The Fingers About It, Gather Some Up.
Sly grog selling is the bane of the diggings.
Many - perhaps
nine-tenths - of the diggers are honest industrious men, desirous of
getting a little there as a stepping-stone to independence elsewhere;
but the other tenth is composed of outcasts and transports - the refuse
of Van Diemen's Land - men of the most depraved and abandoned
characters, who have sought and gained the lowest abyss of crime, and
who would a short time ago have expiated their crimes on a scaffold.
They generally work or rob for a space, and when well stocked with
gold, retire to Melbourne for a month or so, living in drunkenness and
debauchery. If, however, their holiday is spent at the diggings, the
sly grog-shop is the last scene of their boisterous career. Spirit
selling is strictly prohibited; and although Government will license a
respectable public-house on the ROAD, it is resolutely refused ON the
diggings. The result has been the opposite of that which it was
intended to produce. There is more drinking and rioting at the diggings
than elsewhere, the privacy and risk gives the obtaining it an
excitement which the diggers enjoy as much as the spirit itself; and
wherever grog is sold on the sly, it will sooner or later be the scene
of a riot, or perhaps murder. Intemperance is succeeded by quarrelling
and fighting, the neighbouring tents report to the police, and the
offenders are lodged in the lock-up; whilst the grog-tent, spirits,
wine, &c., are seized and taken to the Commissioners.
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