390 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



he responded in language that, to say the least, was injudicious. 

 His speeches at these banquets were ultra-democratic. He lauded 

 the wisdom of their representatives in framing a Constitution so 

 liberal and comprehensive, that it not only reflected credit on the 

 people who elected them, but exacted admiration from eminent 

 statesmen at home. He believed with his audience that all power 

 sprang from the people ; he intended to recognise that principle in 

 his administration, and was satisfied that no Government could be 

 happily conducted without the fullest and freest communication 

 with the people. 



Talk of this kind, if couched in the prophetic strain, might have 

 been excusable, but it was utterly foolish and injurious when 

 addressed to masses of men who had not yet got the franchise, 

 who were smarting under a sense of wrong at being unrepresented, 

 and of whom a large number had been for many months flagrantly 

 defying the Government, and simmering in the incipient stages of 

 rebellion. Within a month after his return to town Sir Charles had 

 got back to the quarter-deck disciplinarian. The people no longer 

 filled the whole space. The military and the police had to be 

 invoked to keep them in the place accorded to them by official 

 regulations. The three months of thoughtless cheering that had 

 followed the Governor's arrival lapsed into a period of depression 

 and anxiety, when he found himself thwarted by his Executive, 

 shunned by the well-to-do classes, hated by the miners, lampooned 

 unmercifully by the press, and, save in his own house, literally 

 " found none so poor to do him reverence ". How this was brought 

 about the annals of the goldfields will show. 



