Protest had decreased
in the early part of 1852 but the appalling winter conditions and the dramatic
increase in crime led to its revival at Castlemaine and Bendigo. This
was less an attack on the license system than a protest against Government
inefficiency and especially the lack of protection from criminals. By September,
there was so much crime that moves towards ‘lynch-law’ were made and on 30
September a Mutual Protection Association was formed that threatened to stop
paying the license fee and use the money to pay for patrols. [1] The police were seen as ineffective at anything other
than collecting licenses and prosecuting sly-groggers (illegal sellers of
spirits). It is difficult to assess just how bad the problem of crime was in the
Castlemaine area but news of the proposed export duty turned a small agitation
into a mass movement.
On 23 October, a well-organised ‘monster meeting’ was held at
Castlemaine. [2] The export duty was condemned, unless it replaced the
license fee, as a grossly unfair additional tax. It was agreed that police
protection was a ‘mockery’ and that any delay in dealing with the lawless state
of the fields would be disastrous. A petition was sent to the Legislative
Council and a deputation was appointed to visit La Trobe and that if no reply
had been received by 15 November, further action would be taken though
non-payment of licenses was viewed as a last resort. In Melbourne, a meeting of
several hundred people welcomed the delegates and their attack on this
‘monstrous tax’ and the ineffectiveness of the police. La Trobe was conciliatory
when he met the delegates almost apologising for the conduct of the police. The
delegates reported back to the diggers and a resolution was passed that if the
export tax was imposed, they would all refuse to pay the license fee and offer
themselves for arrest. However, the following day unaware of this threat, the
Council voted out the bill.
“Dancing Saloon and Grog Shop, Main Road, Ballarat, May
30th/55", by S T Gill
Victory on this issue is insufficient to explain the decline in
the digger movement yet by the beginning of 1853 the main diggings were again
comparatively quiet. In spite of this, the government did address their other
grievances: the Castlemaine police were reformed and an assize court established
in December 1852 and a start was made to a macadamised road from Melbourne.
Nevertheless, a Select Committee of the Legislative Council also established in
December, but despite the critical evidence of Chief Commissioner Wright and
Commissioner Gilbert, produced a weak report supporting the license fee. Twice,
diggers had successfully resisted proposals to increase taxation, yet the
license system remained unchanged.
NSW had handled the gold crisis with ‘masterly commonsense’ and
the mining license was effectively and more important sensitively collected with
little organised opposition. Yet, in Victoria both the license fee and the ways
in which it was extorted from the diggers was a source of growing irritation and
resistance. Blainey called it ‘administration by the tape measure rather than
the brain’. Without this decision, probably the ‘most mindless’ in the long
history of appropriating Australia’s natural resources, he argues, ‘the
rebellion at Eureka in 1854 would not have occurred’. [3] Although Blainey is right to focus on the importance
of the license as a cause of resistance in Victoria, policing played a decisive
role. The colony was policed to an ‘extraordinary degree’ in the 1850s, policing
was regarded as an instrument of government and the police were active agents of
an interventionist and regulatory state. [4]
Conclusions
The criticisms made of La Trobe during 1851 and 1852 by miners
and politicians and in the press were largely justifiable. How far La Trobe was
responsible for this situation is more difficult to assess. Temperamentally, he
was better suited to acting as a subordinate able to gain acceptance of his
decisions from his superiors but this option was no longer available once Port
Phillip gained its independence. This combined with the maelstrom created by the
discovery of gold placed him a challenging situation. Without a strong political
base to support and force through his policies, La Trobe floundered from one
pragmatic solution to another. He found himself in that most dangerous of
political situations of reacting to circumstances rather than controlling them.
His licensing policy, even though based on that introduced largely without
difficulty in NSW, was poorly managed and failed to gain any real support of
diggers. Insensitivity in application and enforcement by some corrupt officials
and police turned licenses into a toxic source of growing political
confrontation. Sir Charles Hotham may have been responsible for events in
Ballarat in late 1854 but La Trobe’s previous mishandling of miners played a
significant role in this catastrophic deterioration of relations between
politically conscious workers and a seemingly intransigent colonial state.
[1] ‘Mount Alexander’, Argus, 2 October 1852, p. 4,
‘A Vigilance Committee at Mount Alexander’, Bell’s Life in Sydney and
Sporting Review, 23 October 1852, p. 5.
