30 A HISTORY OF THE COLONY OF VICTORIA 



solidified into an important political movement, destined to make 

 its weight felt by the Government, and eventually to carry nearly 

 every point contended for. 



It was one of the popular fallacies at headquarters, and an 

 often-expressed belief of Sir Charles Hotham, that the disturbances 

 at Ballaarat did not arise out of the licence -hunting. More than 

 once the Governor had declared that " the masses were urged on by 

 designing men, who had ulterior views, and hoped to profit by 

 anarchy, . . . active, designing, intriguing foreigners, whose aim is 

 disorder and confusion ". The Governor's contemptuous general- 

 isation was hardly warranted, for the foreign element was never 

 preponderant. There were in all some fifteen men who, during 

 the final months of 1854, came into prominence by their speech or 

 acts, but the men who moulded the business and mainly took the re- 

 sponsibility covered five nationalities. They were J. B. Humffray, 

 a Welshman, Peter Lalor, an Irishman, George Black, an English- 

 man, Frederic Vern, a Hanoverian, and Carboni Baffaello, an Italian. 

 These actors were so prominent in the ensuing drama that they 

 deserve a brief personal notice : 



Humffray, who was appointed the first Secretary of the League, 

 was a man of fair education and sound principles. His colleagues, 

 while admitting his value as a negotiator, rather chafed under his 

 laudation of constitutional remedies for their wrongs, and some of 

 them, who were eager for conflict, were inclined to accuse him of 

 being far too friendly with their gold-laced antagonists. 



Lalor was the son of a member of the British House of Com- 

 mons ; by profession a civil engineer, but then, in his twenty- 

 seventh year, working as a miner. He had not the fluent tongue 

 of Humffray, but like him he was of an active temperament, and 

 physically a fine, burly specimen of vigorous manhood. 



Black was the editor of the Diggers' Advocate, a paper hon- 

 estly devoted to the amelioration of the miners' grievances, and 

 remarkably free from the scurrility which marked the other local 

 journal. Indeed, while the diggers recognised him as their friend 

 and champion, they were inclined to the belief that he preached rather 

 too much, and pitched his ideas of duty on too high a plane. Though 

 he shared in the distinction of having a price put on his head by 



