Plodding the past eighteen years.
An ocean of grief would overwhelm me if then I had to vindicate my character:
how, under the hospitality of the British flag, I was put in the felon's dock
of a British Supreme Court to be tried for high treason.
2nd. I have the moral courage to show the truth of my text above,
because I believe in the resurrection of life.
3rd. Brave comrades in arms who fell on that disgraced Sabbath morning,
December 3rd, worthy of a better fate, and most certainly of a longer
remembrance, it is in my power to drag your names from an ignoble oblivion,
and vindicate the unrewarded bravery of one of yourselves! He was once
my mate, the bearer of our standard, the "Southern Cross." Shot down by
a murderous hand, he fell and died struggling like a man in the cause
of the diggers. But he was soon forgotten. That he was buried is known
by the tears of a few true friends! the place of his burial is little known,
and less cared for.
'Sunt tempora nostra; non mutabimur nec mutamur in illis; jam perdidi spem.'
The work will be published on the 1st of December next, and given to each
subscriber by the Author's own hand, on the site of the Eureka Stockade,
from the rising to the setting of the sun, on the memorable third.
Chapter II.
A Jove Principum.
"Wanted a governor. Apply to the People of Victoria:" that was the
extraordinary advertisement, a new chum in want of employment, did meet
in the usual column of 'The Argus', December 1852. Many could afford to laugh
at it, the intelligent however, who had immigrated here, permanently to better
his condition, was forced to rip up in his memory a certain fable of Aesop.
Who would have dared then to warn the fatted Melbourne frogs weltering in grog,
their colonial glory, against their contempt for King Log? Behold King Stork
is your reward. 'Tout comme chez nous.'
One remark before I start for the gold-fields. As an old European traveller
I had set apart a few coppers for the poor at my landing. I had no opportunity
for them. "We shall do well in this land;" was my motto. Who is going to be
the first beggar? Not I! My care for the poor would have less disappointed
me, if I had prepared myself against falling in the unsparing clutches
of a shoal of land-sharks, who swarmed at that time the Yarra Yarra wharfs.
Five pounds for landing my luggage, was the A, followed by the old colonial C,
preceded by the double D. Rapacity in Australia is the alpha and omega.
Yet there were no poor! a grand reflection for the serious. Adam Smith,
settled the question of "the wealth of nations." The source of pauperism
will be settled in Victoria by any quill-driver, who has the pluck to write
the history of public-houses in the towns, and sly-grog sellers
on the gold-fields.
