Licensing Gold

Regulations for gold licenses were issued on 18 August.[1] The problem was that La Trobe lacked sufficient manpower to make them effective. [2] From 1 September 1851, all diggers had to pay 30 shillings a month (the equivalent of a week’s wages) for a license whether they were successful or not or risk prosecution. He hoped that this would provide sufficient territorial revenue to maintain services such as road-building and law and order, and limit those thinking of leaving their regular employment to try their luck on the diggings. Gold Commissioners were appointed, a process not completed until December, to police the license system and to defuse any disputes on the goldfields. Nicholas Fenwick, Commissioner of Crown Lands and a magistrate was appointed on 18 August to apply the regulations and issue licenses in the settled district around Melbourne. [3] Some diggers were able to pay the fee but many more were not and it created widespread resentment. La Trobe was described by the Geelong Advertiser as ‘our Victorian Czar’ imposing an unrealistic tax before any goldfield had shown a profit. [4] La Trobe thought he was acting in an appropriate and fair-minded manner by imposing the rule of law equally on all diggers. His was a desperate approach to the problem of maintaining government in Victoria and resulted in growing opposition.

Why did the gold license prove so unpopular in Victoria? The government needed additional revenue to police and administer the goldfields and many diggers accepted that some taxation was necessary to provide services and protection. A license to mine would in principle have had some deterrent effect on the disruption to the colonial labour market by providing a small barrier to entry into the industry and paid before any income could be earned in the industry. As it was paid monthly, it also provided inducement to leave mining where incomes were modest. Whatever the intention behind the license fee, it was considered unjust. It was a direct tax without legislative sanction. In the mid-nineteenth century, direct taxation was still uncommon and resistance to direct taxes like the poll tax had entered folk memory. The level of the fee was also a major source of resistance since only a minority of diggers were, as yet, paying their way. Was this an attempt to keep the poor from seeking their fortunes, many angrily retorted? Finally, some goldfield officials were tactless and arbitrary setting a precedent for events in 1854. In its haste to control the gold rushes, the Government had neither justified its actions (it was not to do so for two years) nor considered more acceptable alternatives.

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[1] This is evident in La Trobe to Earl Grey, 10 October 1851, ‘Further Papers relative to the Recent Discovery of Gold in Australia’, Parliamentary Papers, Vol. lxiv, 1852-3, pp. 42-43. See ‘Licenses to Dig and Search for Gold’, Argus, 21 August 1851, p. 2.

[2] Goss, Alan, Charles Joseph La Trobe, (Melbourne University Press), 1956, pp. 103-126; Reilly, Dianne, ‘“Duties of No Ordinary Difficulty”: Charles Joseph La Trobe and the Goldfields Administration’, Victorian Historical Journal, Vol. 72, (1 & 2), (2001), pp. 173-186, 181-201, and ibid, Drury, Dianne Reilly, La Trobe, pp. 216-231, are useful studies of La Trobe’s problems.

[3] Argus, 21 August 1851, p. 2.

[4] Geelong Advertiser, 26 August 1851.

Is the ‘Westminster system’ discredited? My thousandth post!

Looking back over the posts I’ve written over the last few years it seems appropriate, that having spent a great deal of time writing about the nature of and reasons for radical change in Britain, Canada and Australia and about how women and men struggled to get their voice heard by the political establishment, my thousandth post should be on the challenge facing contemporary British politics.  Nicola Sturgeon, perhaps the most thoughtful of the party leaders—and I mean this as a compliment-- today promised that her party would reform the discredited ‘Westminster system’ to meet the demands of ‘ordinary people’ across the UK. Though her agenda remains Scottish independence, she has articulated something that is blindingly obvious to anyone beyond the ‘Westminster village’—the current Westminster system is in need of radical reform.  Since devolution was introduced in Scotland and Wales in 1998, the major political parties have failed to address this issue.  Yes, they’ve tinkered round the edges but this has been largely cosmetic rather than ‘real change’.

There have been moves on House of Lords reform but they appear to have stuttered to a halt.  Attempts at electoral reform and changing constituency boundaries foundered with the proportional representation referendum and party politics in Parliament.  Belatedly, the Conservatives have come to the conclusion that things like the NHS and local government cannot be managed from Westminster.  But, and it was exemplified on the debate on the use of the secret ballot in relation to the Speaker, many politicians do not recognise that what they do appears petty, corrupt and out-of-touch with the lives of ordinary people.  Insulated in their ‘bubble’, they only emerge when they need your vote and even then tardily if it’s a ‘safe’ seat.  Is the system ‘discredited’ in the eyes of many voters?  Well, if voter turnout is a good indicator, and I think it is, the falling number of people who bother to vote in any elections—local, national or European—makes clear just what people think of politicians.  Now, politicians have never been the most popular of individuals but in the last decade there has been a shift from indifference to what politicians do to one of visceral dislike.  They give the impression of a disregard for the electorate, in the public imagination borne out by the expenses scandal, and complete unawareness of the needs and plight of their fellow citizens.  We increasingly have a career cadre of politicians in all of the major parties whose experience of work is limited to being research assistants or running their own business, who have been educated in high-flying public or state schools and universities and whose motivation appears less concerned with helping the public than with helping themselves. 

Although there is a crying need to reform our public institutions—and I’m not just talking about the political ones—we should be clear that institutions are not in themselves the cause of the discredited system, it’s the people who inhabit and run them and it’s this as much as anything that explains why reform has not taken place.  Those within any political system have a marked unwillingness to reform it: it might affect them.  Take the House of Lords as an example.  Getting rid of the ‘hereditaries’ or at least most of them, was not a real problem as their position was and is indefensible in a democratic system but turning it into an elected House now that’s another matter.  Labour may call for this but, it appears, with little enthusiasm to push the matter through—it had thirteen years to do so and failed.  Having the ‘gift’ of being able to appoint life peers is, whatever your party, an important tool for managing Parliament.  Am I surprised that calls for a federal UK, something discussed at length in the aftermath of the Scottish referendum, have declined from an overwhelming shout to a quiet whimper in the past months?  Not really even though it is an obvious solution to the growing crisis in the constitutional legitimacy of government.  Whether it’s further devolution, Britain’s place in the European Union, austerity politics or the NHS, the fires of discordance are being stoked by politicians who want to scare us into voting for them because, as far as they’re concerned, everything will be fine if you elect their party into power.  The point, and Nicola Sturgeon recognises this, is that it won’t and before long the public, not easily roused from its constitutional apathy, will assert its democratic voice.