THE GOLDFIELDS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT 17 



fields was due to the miners being denied their political rights, 

 and pledging the meeting to assist in reducing the licence tax. 

 When the delegates got back to Bendigo further meetings were 

 held, at which it was resolved that 10s. should be tendered as the 

 licence fee for September; if it was refused, they would take the 

 consequence ; and, to ensure unanimity, every tent was to bear a 

 placard, "No licence taken here". These resolutions were carried 

 into effect. On the 27th of August a deputation of about thirty 

 miners attended at the Camp, and tendered the 10s. fee, which 

 was, of course, formally rejected. 



While this ferment was working Mr. Latrobe had not been 

 entirely inactive. First of all, he sent the Chief Commissioner 

 of the Goldfields, and also the Chief Commissioner of Police, to 

 Bendigo to investigate complaints, and he made provision for 

 possible conflict by sending eighty men of the 40th Eegiment, 

 which brought up the force on the field to 154 soldiers and 171 

 police. Directly after the formal tender of the 10s. fee Mr. 

 Commissioner Wright, after consultation with the Chief Com- 

 missioner of Police, wrote to the Lieutenant-Governor : "We are 

 compelled to report that the reduction of the licence fee, if not 

 its abolition altogether, is inevitable ". Before surrendering, Mr. 

 Latrobe exhausted his powers of coercion, and on the 1st of 

 September he sent up the remainder of the 40th Eegiment, 145 

 men, and despatched an urgent appeal to the Governor of Van 

 Diemen's Land for the service of any troops that could be spared 

 thence. But the attitude of the diggers was not openly combative. 

 Possibly the red-coat display gave them pause in initiating fighting, 

 and certainly a substantial majority believed in gaining their ends 

 by negotiation. Their passive resistance was a form of contest the 

 military could not meet. They would not pay more than 10s. for 

 a licence, and they would accept the result of their contumacy. 

 Hundreds of the tents were decorated with the placard that invited 

 arrest, and any traitor to his order who should be detected paying 

 the 30s. fee was to be warned to quit the district within twenty-four 

 hours ! No wonder that Commissioner Wright felt himself power- 

 less, and recommended a capitulation as inevitable. The most violent 

 denouncers of the vacillation of the Government could not suggest 



VOL. II. 2 



