THE GOLDFIELDS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 11 



Peace to be dealt with. The seventh clause appropriated one-half 

 of the penalties recovered to the use of the informer, or party pro- 

 secuting ; and the eighth, after denning the words " mining and 

 digging," wound up thus : " Nothing in this Act contained shall 

 be construed to extend to any preliminary search or inquiry for the 

 purpose merely of discovering any ore or minerals in any particular 

 locality or part of such waste lands ". There can be no doubt that 

 the common-sense interpretation of this clause would have allowed 

 every unsuccessful prospector to evade the fee, and some intention 

 of that kind must have influenced the drafting of the measure. The 

 police, however, would not regard it in that light, and it was vain to 

 plead that the licenceless one was only an investigator. Every able- 

 bodied man on the goldfields, not in the service of the Crown, or 

 licensed for some form of business, was supposed to be a miner in 

 ease or in posse. Undoubted evidence proved that many respect- 

 able men were subjected to the indignity of arrest, with the too fre- 

 quent accompaniment of violence and abusive language, and in 

 some cases, when brought before the Justices, were illegally fined or 

 imprisoned for not having a licence, when by no stretch of imagina- 

 tion could the Act be made to apply to them. There can be little 

 doubt that many of these arrests were made by the police under the 

 stimulant of getting half the fine, an arrangement which was con- 

 demned by more than one of the Commissioners as decidedly de- 

 moralising. So greedy were the troopers of these irregular gains, 

 that when a recalcitrant digger could not be convicted on the charge 

 for which he was arrested, it was altered to resisting the police in 

 the execution of their duty, and the fine was exacted all the .same. 

 The evidence of reliable men and the contemporary press is over- 

 whelming that the rank and file of the police on the goldfields in 

 1852-53 were venal in the extreme, and where they were not 

 bought off, their hunting duties were carried on with a vindictive 

 spitefulness that justified any organised opposition. Mr. C. Eud- 

 ston Read, one of the Assistant Commissioners at Mount Alexander, 

 published his opinion that the hatred of the miner for the police was 

 mainly due to " their overbearing conduct ; many having been ac- 

 customed to a system of convict discipline, it was not in their nature 

 to perform their duty quietly without bouncing, bullying and swear- 



