THE KEVOLT OF THE DIGGERS 51 



that so sorry a spectacle should have been strung on long after the 

 result was obvious. 



When the last prisoner went free the rewards for Vern, Lalor 

 and Black were withdrawn, and under a new Chief Secretary those 

 reforms were begun which, had they been initiated a year before, 

 would have rendered the struggle at Eureka an impossibility. All 

 that the Ballaarat Reform League demanded was conceded to the 

 people, and certainly might have been secured without bloodshed 

 if the diggers could have commanded patience. But patience is a 

 hard doctrine to preach to men smarting under admitted injustice, 

 and whose protests are met by a summons to obedience and the 

 repression of brute force. 



