C.R."
Within six short months, five thousand citizens of Melbourne, receive the name
of this applauded ruler with a loud and prolonged outburst of indignation!
Some twenty Ballaarat miners lie in the grave, weltering in their gore!
double that number are bleeding from bayonet wounds; thirteen more
have the rope round their necks, and two more of their leading men are priced
four hundred pounds for their body or carcase.
'Tout cela, n'est pas precisement comme chez nous, pas vrai?'
Please, give me a dozen puffs at my black-stump, and then I will proceed
to the next chapter.
Chapter XII.
Sufficit Diei Sua Vexatio.
Either this chapter must be very short, or I had better give it up
without starting it at all.
Up to the middle of September, 1854, the search for licences happened
once a month; at most twice: perhaps once a week on the Gravel Pits,
owing to the near neighbourhood of the Camp. Now, licence-hunting became
the order of the day. Twice a week on every line; and the more the diggers
felt annoyed at it, the more our Camp officials persisted in goading us,
to render our yoke palatable by habit. I assert, as an eye-witness
and a sufferer, that both in October and November, when the weather allowed it,
the Camp rode out for the hunt every alternate day. True, one day they would
hunt their game on Gravel-pits, another day, they pounced on the foxes
of the Eureka; and a third day, on the Red-hill: but, though working
on different leads, are we not all fellow diggers? Did not several of us
meet again in the evening, under the same tent, belonging to the same party?
It is useless to ask further questions.
Towards the latter end of October and the beginning of November we had such
a set of scoundrels camped among us, in the shape of troopers and traps,
that I had better shut up this chapter at once, or else whirl the whole
manuscript bang down a shicer.
"Hold hard, though, take your time, old man: don't let your Roman blood
hurry you off like the hurricane, and thus damage the merits of your case.
Answer this question first," says my good reader.
"If it be a fair one, I will."
"Was, then, the obnoxious mode of collecting the tax the sole cause
of discontent: or was the tax itself (two pounds for three months)
objected to at the same time?"
"I think the practical miner, who had been hard at work night and day,
for the last four or six months, and, after all, had just bottomed a shicer,
objected to the tax itself, because he could not possibly afford to pay it.
And was it not atrocious to confine this man in the lousy lock-up at the Camp,
because he had no luck?"
Allow me, now, in return, to put a very important question, of the old
Roman stamp, 'Cui bono?' that is, Where did our licence money go to?
That's a nut which will be positively cracked by-and-bye.
