THE REVOLT OF THE DIGGERS 25 



mass of the real workers were stalwart and industrious, honest and 

 clean-living ; strict in upholding justice among themselves, and 

 ready to band together to put down lawlessness and turbulence. 



The official view of the miner as a dangerous creature to be 

 kept down at any cost must have been intensely irritating to men 

 of this calibre. When it became known that Sir Charles Hotham, 

 the man whose carriage they had so recently dragged in triumph, 

 with uproarious cheers, had actually sent up orders that the police 

 should redouble their activity, and specially devote two days a 

 week to hunting unlicensed diggers, the sense of the outrage by 

 which this sport was always accompanied alienated many of the 

 most loyal friends of order. The Ballaarat goldfield was divided 

 between four Commissioners, but the boundaries of their jurisdiction 

 were ill-defined, and as each Commissioner employed a separate 

 band of licence-hunters, it sometimes happened that diggers pursu- 

 ing their lawful avocation were called up from their work twice or 

 even three times in one day. When it is remembered that many 

 of the shafts were down from 100 to 150 feet in depth, and that the 

 miner, even though he had shown his licence an hour before, dared 

 not disobey a peremptory order to come up without the risk of 

 being marched off to the logs for resisting the police, it is easy 

 to imagine the simmering wrath which the orders for renewed 

 activity in this hateful mode of collection aroused. Indeed, it is 

 a marvel that an outburst of violent resistance was so long deferred. 

 The real miner had much at stake, and by habit and tradition he 

 was law-abiding. Some petitions were addressed to the Governor, 

 but they were unheeded. Meetings were held at which deputations 

 were appointed to wait on him, but he refused to see them. An 

 accidental collision with the police caused the smouldering wrath to 

 burst into a flame. 



One of the most disreputable hostelries, that had commanded 

 a roaring trade amongst the hard-drinking section of the field, was 

 the Eureka Hotel on Specimen Hill, kept by James Bentley, an 

 ex-convict from Van Diemen's Land. It was a large, ramshackle 

 building of weather-board, and with the stock-in-trade was valued 

 by the owner, in a claim which he brought unsuccessfully against 

 the Government, at 29,750. If this represented anything like 



