News of the successful
attack on the Stockade finally reached Melbourne in the early hours
of Monday 4 December but it only partially relieved Hotham’s anxiety. The
immediate danger may have been removed but it was possible that Eureka was the
beginning of a larger rebellion and his immediate response was to request
reinforcements from VDL. He also met a delegation of ‘influential’ citizens
asking them to organise a defence of Melbourne as all his troops were in
Ballarat and over 1,500 special constables were sworn in as a result. Hotham and
his Executive Council proclaimed martial law in and around Ballarat. [1] In an effort to muster support, he presented his case
to the Legislative Council on 4 December and to the squatters’ representatives
two days later. [2] Both bodies pledged their support ‘to maintain the
law and preserve the community from social disorganisation’. [3] Hotham unconvincingly attempted to blame the
rebellion on ‘foreigners’ and the Irish. There was widespread contemporary
criticism for the lenient ways in which Hotham treated American citizens who had
been involved in the rebellion. This action reinforced the erroneous view that
Americans did not play as active role. [4] Most of the movement’s leadership were still at large
and out of the 114 arrested only eleven were ‘foreigners’ and around thirty
Irish. Rewards were offered for the leaders of the insurgents. The authorities
were under the impression that Vern was the rebel leader and a reward of £500
was offered for his capture and only £200 for the arrest of Lalor and Black, the
‘minister for war’ who had not been in the Stockade during the attack, for
inciting men to arms. None were arrested. [5]
Reactions to the attack on the Eureka Stockade were immediate
and led to an extraordinarilyEurer rapid reversal in public opinion. News spread
quickly. The Ballarat Times printed a report with black borders on
the day of the attack, the Geelong Advertiser the following day
and on Tuesday, other major newspapers in the colony prominently displayed
accounts. Before long however, disgust at the atrocities quickly turned
Victorians against Hotham’s Government especially when it was clear Melbourne
was not threatened. Sympathy was now with the defeated diggers and government
forces were regarded as murderers and butchers. The Age stated:
There are not a dozen respectable citizens in Melbourne who
do not entertain an indignant feeling against it for its weakness, its folly and
its last crowning error. They do not sympathise with injustice and
coercion. [6]
On 5 December, over 4,000 people attended a loyalist meeting
called by the Lord Mayor of Melbourne to consider the defence of the town
against a possible outbreak of lawlessness and to give the people of Melbourne
an opportunity to show their support for the authorities. [7] Both John Pascoe Fawkner and John O’Shanassy called
for moderation but this was followed by a speaker in the audience calling upon
the government to resign. The Lord Mayor tried to end the meeting by vacating
the chair but, instead of leaving, the audience installed a new chairman. A
number of speakers maintained that the Colonial Secretary, John Foster was
responsible for the recent disaster. A motion that he should be removed from
office received overwhelming support and Doctors Embling and Owens were
instructed to convey this to Hotham. By Wednesday 6 December, public meetings
were being called across Victoria, condemning the government’s actions and
newspapers began to appear attacking Hotham. Around 6,000 Melbourne residents
gathered outside St. Paul’s on 6 December and refused to support the
government’s action, called for the diggers’ grievances to be addressed but
condemned the act of rebellion. [8] Meetings were held calling for the release of the
prisoners, public representation and liberty and justice. On 9 December,
gatherings of about 600 people in Castlemaine and 2,000 in Bendigo opposed the
license and condemned the attack on the Stockade. Within a few days, a
comprehensive military victory had become a political defeat.
The turmoil in Melbourne was in stark contrast to the prevailing mood in Ballarat. On Tuesday 5 December, the commander of the colony’s military forces Major-General Sir Robert Nickle, who had been knighted in 1841 for his services during the Canadian rebellion, arrived to take command in Ballarat. [9] He successfully lowered the political temperature and his conciliatory manner helped restore public confidence and the Ballarat diggers quickly resumed their normal work. [10] The Argus commented:
The turmoil in Melbourne was in stark contrast to the prevailing mood in Ballarat. On Tuesday 5 December, the commander of the colony’s military forces Major-General Sir Robert Nickle, who had been knighted in 1841 for his services during the Canadian rebellion, arrived to take command in Ballarat. [9] He successfully lowered the political temperature and his conciliatory manner helped restore public confidence and the Ballarat diggers quickly resumed their normal work. [10] The Argus commented:
The martial law administered by Sir R. Nickle is about as
far superior to the Commissioner’s law, under which we have been so long
labouring, as it is possible for anything human to be. Had Sir R. Nickle arrived
here a few days before, the bloodshed of last Sunday would have been
avoided. [11]
Though he condemned the rebellion, he showed his disapproval of
the actions that had caused it. [12] Grievances were aired, tension subsided, arms were
handed in and martial law was repealed on 9 December. [13] According to the Argus:
…the moral force party, now that they are relieved from the
threats and intimidations of the armed agitators, are fast assuming a
preponderance. [14]
In the days and weeks that followed the decisive military
victory at the Stockade, there was a groundswell of public indignation in
Melbourne as well as in Ballarat against what was seen as a brutal over-reaction
to a situation largely brought about by the actions of Gold Commission and
government officials. Rede, who made the vital decisions in the few days before
Eureka, though never blamed by Hotham, was moved from Ballarat remaining on full
pay until late in 1855 when Hotham arranged for his appointment as
deputy-sheriff of Geelong and commandant of the Volunteer Rifles. He became
sheriff of Geelong in 1857, Ballarat in 1868 and Melbourne in 1877. On 16
December, Inspector Foster of Ballarat reported that threats had been made to
the lives of several police officers and recommended that most of Ballarat’s
pre-Stockade police should be moved out of the area for their own safety.
There were also casualties in government. The public meeting in
Melbourne on 5 December called for the resignation of Colonial Secretary Foster.
[15] In fact, he had done this the previous day although
Hotham did not announce it for a week. Foster had been under relentless attack
in the press for several months and every problem in the colony’s government was
blamed on him. This was both unjustifiable and unfair since, under Hotham, he
had already been deprived of much of his authority. Whether Hotham used Foster
as a scapegoat for Eureka is questionable but he was certainly glad to see him
go. He could now appoint a Colonial Secretary with whom he could work and who
had the people’s confidence. This was clearly evident in his choice of William
Haines as Foster’s replacement with whom Hotham quickly developed an excellent
working relationship. [16]
What of Hotham’s responsibility for Eureka? To his credit, but to his own detriment, he always accepted full responsibility for the policies that had been followed on the goldfields. However, his action in pursuing the 13 rebels charged with High Treason while protecting government officers at Ballarat with an Act of Indemnity was unpopular with many in the colony. On 10 January 1855, the Gold Fields Commission wrote to Hotham recommending a general amnesty for all those connected with the Stockade, a suggestion he flatly rejected. [17] In addition, Hotham tried to restrict the Gold Field Commission by directing it to avoid the Eureka issue, something it overruled as a violation of its independence. This incident ‘was indicative of the barrier of hostility that was building up between the Governor and the colonists’. [18] Until Eureka, Hotham had retained a degree of public support and, although there was a growing hostility to the government, it was not directed against the Governor. After Eureka, if Hotham had had the ‘instincts of a politician he could easily have salvaged his popularity at this stage’. [19] If he had announced a general amnesty for the Eureka prisoners and waived the gold license pending the Royal Commission’s report, he would have been largely freed from personal blame. By refusing to do both, Hotham found himself the focus for the increasingly emotional reaction to the tragedy of Eureka leading to a very public humiliation when the Eureka prisoners were acquitted of high treason in March 1855.
The Royal Commission released its report in late March 1855 and was scathing in its criticism of the handling of events at Ballarat. Unsurprisingly, it agreed with all of the diggers’ demands, mindful that rebellion might reoccur in the colony. It decided that the causes of the Eureka rebellion included a lack of political rights, the diggers’ inability to buy land and the way the mining license was collected. Although the license was the trigger that led to the unrest, by itself it was not the main cause. The Commission recommended that the license be abolished and replaced with an export duty on gold and that diggers would pay an annual £1 miners’ right. [20] The local courts replaced the hated and corrupt Gold Commission and regulated conditions on the goldfields. On the 14 July 1855, just eight months after the Eureka rebellion, nine members of the mining community, including Raffaelo Carboni, were elected unanimously at Bakery Hill to the local courts. The diggers’ control of the local courts was seen by the mining community as the ‘blood bought rights’ of the Eureka rebellion. The right to elect members to the Legislative Council led to two of the digger leaders, Peter Lalor and John Humffray join the Council in November 1855, less than a year after the massacre. The Commission of Enquiry also recommended that the squatters’ control of the land be broken, and the diggers have the right to buy land. The resultant subdivision of land around mining sites led to the development of some of Victoria’s most important regional towns and cities. ‘The day of arbitrary or despotic rule in Victoria was over’. [21]
What of Hotham’s responsibility for Eureka? To his credit, but to his own detriment, he always accepted full responsibility for the policies that had been followed on the goldfields. However, his action in pursuing the 13 rebels charged with High Treason while protecting government officers at Ballarat with an Act of Indemnity was unpopular with many in the colony. On 10 January 1855, the Gold Fields Commission wrote to Hotham recommending a general amnesty for all those connected with the Stockade, a suggestion he flatly rejected. [17] In addition, Hotham tried to restrict the Gold Field Commission by directing it to avoid the Eureka issue, something it overruled as a violation of its independence. This incident ‘was indicative of the barrier of hostility that was building up between the Governor and the colonists’. [18] Until Eureka, Hotham had retained a degree of public support and, although there was a growing hostility to the government, it was not directed against the Governor. After Eureka, if Hotham had had the ‘instincts of a politician he could easily have salvaged his popularity at this stage’. [19] If he had announced a general amnesty for the Eureka prisoners and waived the gold license pending the Royal Commission’s report, he would have been largely freed from personal blame. By refusing to do both, Hotham found himself the focus for the increasingly emotional reaction to the tragedy of Eureka leading to a very public humiliation when the Eureka prisoners were acquitted of high treason in March 1855.
The Royal Commission released its report in late March 1855 and was scathing in its criticism of the handling of events at Ballarat. Unsurprisingly, it agreed with all of the diggers’ demands, mindful that rebellion might reoccur in the colony. It decided that the causes of the Eureka rebellion included a lack of political rights, the diggers’ inability to buy land and the way the mining license was collected. Although the license was the trigger that led to the unrest, by itself it was not the main cause. The Commission recommended that the license be abolished and replaced with an export duty on gold and that diggers would pay an annual £1 miners’ right. [20] The local courts replaced the hated and corrupt Gold Commission and regulated conditions on the goldfields. On the 14 July 1855, just eight months after the Eureka rebellion, nine members of the mining community, including Raffaelo Carboni, were elected unanimously at Bakery Hill to the local courts. The diggers’ control of the local courts was seen by the mining community as the ‘blood bought rights’ of the Eureka rebellion. The right to elect members to the Legislative Council led to two of the digger leaders, Peter Lalor and John Humffray join the Council in November 1855, less than a year after the massacre. The Commission of Enquiry also recommended that the squatters’ control of the land be broken, and the diggers have the right to buy land. The resultant subdivision of land around mining sites led to the development of some of Victoria’s most important regional towns and cities. ‘The day of arbitrary or despotic rule in Victoria was over’. [21]
The rebels at Eureka found
themselves caught up in events that were fast-moving and had armed themselves
for defence against the authorities. Yet, their use of the Southern
Cross and a defiant rhetoric that went beyond the popular
constitutionalism of previous protests led Hotham, with some justification to
regard them as involved in rebellion. Unlike the rebellions in the Canadas and
in South Wales, there is considerable disagreement about what sort of rebellion
Eureka actually was and what it came to mean. For Bob O’Brien:
The attack on the miners at Eureka was something like the
slaughter carried out by the Chinese regime on human rights demonstrators in and
around Tien An Men Square in 1989…In a sense, the slaughter at Eureka was a riot
by administrators, soldiers and police representing the old order of privilege
and patronage. They were making a last-ditch attack on the gold-rush immigrants
who foreshadowed a new order in which human dignity would be respected. Eureka
is ultimately about human rights. [22]
By contrast, Audrey Oldfield suggests:
If viewed as a revolution to gain redress of grievances and
greater democracy, it was certainly more successful than most of the greater
revolutions in Europe and the uprising in Ireland six years before! [23]
Geoffrey Blainey commented:
Eureka became a legend, a battle-cry for nationalists,
republicans, liberals, radicals, or communists, each creed finding in the
rebellion the lessons they liked to see…In fact the new colonies’ political
constitutions were not affected by Eureka, but the first Parliament that met
under Victoria's new constitution was alert to the democratic spirit of the
goldfields, and passed laws enabling each adult man in Victoria to vote at
elections, to vote by secret ballot, and to stand for the Legislative
Assembly. [24]
The extent to which the Eureka Stockade was instrumental in
precipitating change and the extent to which change was inevitable remains a
point of contention. There can be no doubt however that the Eureka affair has
echoed and re-echoed in the national political consciousness down to the present
day. The Eureka affair has been variously characterised and mythologised as the
cradle of Australian democracy, as a revolt of free men against imperial
tyranny, of labour against a privileged ruling class, of independent free
enterprise against burdensome taxation, as an expression of multicultural
republicanism, and so on. Notwithstanding, this enduring if ambiguous legacy was
not apparent in Ballarat in the immediate aftermath of Eureka. The inclination
among officials and the Ballarat community alike was to forget the incident.
There were also mixed feelings in the general community. Some remained
antagonistic, seeing the Stockade episode as the result of the extreme actions
of a few hotheads. Indeed, a number of the Stockaders themselves, including
Lalor, were quick to move on in respectable and profitable new directions. As a
result, the event soon faded from public consciousness, the materials used in
the construction of the Stockade were reclaimed for other purposes and its
physical trace disappeared. Nevertheless, people did not forget. Geoffrey
Blainey again:
It seems to me that Rede and Hotham were determined to push
protest into a resistance that be called rebellion and justify
suppression…Tragedies like Eureka have occurred and will be repeated across time
and throughout the world when governments fail to heed the voice of the people
and ignore their needs and rights. [25]
The events that took place at the Eureka Stockade in December
1854 have achieved a privileged status within Australian national mythology. As
Stuart Macintyre observed:
The Eureka rebellion became a formative event in the
national mythology…its celebrants saw it as a belated counterpart to the
Declaration of Independence of the American colonists eighty years earlier,
without which a transition to nationhood was incomplete. [26]
The diggers’ resistance at Eureka and the brutal actions of the
colonial authorities in suppressing it have taken on a significance exceeding
the actual events and accounts of Eureka in various histories of Australia have
a tendency to elide the specific details of the incident in favour of situating
the event in a narrative of the nation. [27]
[1] Victoria Government Gazette, 4 December 1854
‘Martial Law at Ballaarat’, Argus, 5 December 1854, p. 4.
[2] ‘Legislative Council’, Argus, 6 December 1854,
pp. 4-5, detailed the address supporting Hotham in the Legislative Council.
[3] ‘The Legislative Council’, Argus, 8 December
1854, p. 4.
[4] See, ‘The Governor and the Foreigners, To the Editor of
the Argus’, Argus, 22 January 1855, p. 5, and ‘Amnesty to Americans’,
Argus, 23 January 1855, p. 4, was highly critical of what it termed as
‘favouritism towards American citizens…displayed by Sir Charles Hotham’.
[5] Ibid, MacFarlane, Ian, (ed.), Eureka From the
Official Records, pp. 205-207, contains a list of those arrested.
[6] The Age, 5 December 1854.
[7] ‘Defence of the City, Great Public Meeting’,
Argus, 5 December 1854, p. 7.
[8] ‘Meeting for the Protection of Constitutional Liberty’,
Argus, 7 December 1854, p. 5.
[9] McNicoll, Ronald, ‘Sir Robert Nickle (1786-1855)’,
ADB, Vol. 5, pp. 339-340.
[10] On the return to normality in Ballarat, see
‘Ballaarat’, Argus, 7 December 1854, p. 4, and a report a week later,
‘Ballaarat’, Argus 18 December 1854, p. 5.
[11] ‘Geelong’, Argus, 9 December 1854, p. 5
[12] SLV, MS 13518, Charles Evans, Diary, 6 December
1854, p. 145, echoed this view: ‘He [Nickle] stepped out of his carriage as the
troops were on their way to the Camp & addressed them in very sensible &
politic, he seemed to deplore the late sacrifice of life & expressed him
anxious to do all in his power to restore confidence & tranquillity’. On 8
December, Evans wrote: ‘The temperate attitude assumed by Sir Robert Nichol has
done a good deal toward restoring confidence & the majority seem earnestly
desirous of peace. The late lamentable occurrences have been most disastrous to
both diggers and storekeepers -trade has been all but suspended…’
[13] This was announced in the Government Gazette, 6
December 1854, ‘Revocation of Martial Law in Ballaarat’, Argus, 8
December 1854, p. 5.
[14] ‘Geelong’, Argus, 9 December 1854, p. 5
[15] ‘Mr Foster’s Resignation’, Argus, 7 December
1854, p. 4.
[16] ‘Causes of Revolt’, Argus, 6 December 1854, p.
6, attacked Foster.
[17] ‘Ballaarat’, Argus, 11 January 1855, p. 5, ‘The
Approaching Trials’, Argus, 13 January 1855, p. 4, ‘The Amnesty’,
Argus, 20 January 1855, p. 4.
[18] Ibid, Charles Hotham, p. 159.
[19] Ibid, p. 163.
[20] Connelly, C. N. ‘Miners’ Rights’, Curthoys, A., and
Markus, A., (eds.), Who are Our Enemies? Racism and the Australian
Working-class, (Hale and Iremonger), 1978, pp. 35-47.
[21] Ibid, Molony, John, Eureka, p. 175.
[22] Ibid, Massacre at Eureka.
[23] Oldfield, Audrey, The Great Republic of the
Southern Seas: Republicans in Nineteenth-Century Australia, (Hale &
Iremonger), 1999, p. 195.
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