HISTORICAL REVIEW OF VICTORIA. 



345 



i 



paid for the transport of stores from the sea-port to the principal gold-fields ; and it is 

 recorded that one publican, owning or controlling as many as a hundred and twenty-two 

 public-houses, or " shanties," disbursed no less than one thousand five hundred pounds 

 sterling a week for cartage, during seven consecutive months of 1853. The criminal 

 element in the population, com- 

 posed chiefly of convicts who 

 had escaped from Van Die- 

 men's Land, became a source 

 of danger and depredation to 

 the community. On the 2nd 

 of April, 1852, a gang of these 

 desperadoes boarded the Nel- 

 son, lying in Hobson's Hay, 

 and succeeded in carrying off 

 gold-dust to the value of 

 twenty-four thousand pounds ; 

 escorts were robbed on their 

 way down from the gold-fields 

 to Melbourne, and life and 

 property became so insecure 

 that diggers slept, and moved 

 about from place to place, with 

 loaded revolvers by their side. 



Mr. Latrobe was succeeded 

 as Governor by Sir Charles 

 Hotham, who arrived in Mel- 

 bourne on the 2 ist of June, 

 1854, .and inherited a legacy 

 of troubles left by his pre- 

 decessor. The separation of Port Phillip from New South \Yales had been attended 

 by the creation of a Legislative Council, composed of ten nominee and twenty elected 

 Members. But among the latter there were no representatives of the great mass of the 

 population concentrated on the gold-fields. One of the first acts of this body was to 

 impose a. license fee of thirty shillings per month which was raised for a time to sixty 

 shillings on ever)' person searching for gold. The license was not transferable ; it was 

 available for use only within half a mile of the police camp from which it had been 

 issued, and it had to be produced whenever demanded by a police officer. This was the 

 most irritating circumstance connected with the license, for digger-hunting became a 

 popular pastime with the young cadets who wore the Government uniform, and was often 

 practised with a harshness and tyranny which were altogether indefensible. Every digger 

 who had neglected to procure or to renew, or who had lost or mislaid, his license, was 

 liable to be apprehended ; and it was no uncommon spectacle to see fifty or sixty men 

 handcuffed together like so many felons and dragged to the camp, there to be fined 

 or otherwise dealt with. An agitation for the suppression of this impost which was 



A HUT AND A STOKE AT THE DIGGINGS. 

 Adapted from a sketch by F. Gill. 



