2. A n y person w h o m a y arrive on the ground and apply for a licence on or after the 15th of any month will be charged half the above fee. 3. All persons at the goldfields w h o are in any manner connected with the search for gold, as tent-keepers, cooks, & c , will be required to take out a licence on the same terms as those w h o are engaged in digging for it. They were to take effect on and after the 1st January, 1852, and continue in force until cancelled. As was only to be expected, the most intense excitement was engendered, whose offspring was the disaffection which broke out in open rebellion at Ballarat in 1854. Indignation meetings were held, at one of which 14,000 persons were said to have attended, and after threats of not only defiance, but resistance, were uttered, without any reservation, they declared, on behalf of 30,000 diggers, that they would not pay the increased fee, no matter what might be the consequences. T h e fierce agitation bursting forth in all directions seems to have so stunned the Government, that it was as if panic-stricken. It wavered and floundered and hesitated, until the 13th December, when it was decided to withdraw the obnoxious fee augmentation ; yet this determination does not appear to have been officially published until the Gazette issue of the 24th, when it was at length formulated in the usual style, and in these terms :—Measures being n o w under the consideration of Government, which have for their object the substitution, as soon as circumstances permit, of other Regulations in lieu of those n o w in force, based upon the principle of a royalty leviable upon the amount actually raised, under which gold m a y be lawfully removed from its natural place of deposit : His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor, with the advice of the Executive Council, hereby causes it be notified that n o alteration will for the present be m a d e in the amount of the License Fee as levied under the Government notice of the 16th August, 1851, and that the Government notice of the 1st inst. is hereby rescinded.
Even this concession did not calm the storm, which continued to rage with much fury. A deputation of miners arrived in town from M o u n t Alexander, to ask the co-operation of the sympathizers in town ; and on the 29th December a mass meeting was held on the Flagstaff Hill, to receive and deal with a report of grievances from the miners of the Mount. Dr. Webb-Richmond was vociferously voted to the chair, which he promptly assumed by mounting a pile of wood close by, and from this he denounced with bitter indignation the uncalled-for tyranny of the Government. T h e principal other spokesmen were Messrs. J. A. Marsden, Henry Lineham, and Captain Harrison, w h o did not mince their words, but inveighed forcibly against the "monstrous" injustice about to be inflicted upon an enterprising and industrious body of colonists. Others with weaker lungs and of less note followed suit, and resolutions were passed :—(1) T o pay no licence-fee or impost on gold until the licence question was finally adjusted; (2) Denouncing the arbitrary action of Commissioner Fletcher for seizing some gold belonging to diggers; and (3) T h e adoption of a Petition to the Legislative Council against a projected Vagrant Act, the voting of pay for additional soldiers, and the importation of V a n Diemen's Land pensioners to do duty as constables. It is essential to the intelligibility of this gathering that I should offer some explanation of certain facts not previously referred to. Every soldier, and everyone that could be obtained available as a trooper or a constable was drafted off to the goldfields for the preservation of peace and property. T h e diggers, as a whole, were well affected and well behaved, but by this time there was necessarily a large admixture of the rascaldom of the period, worked up with the general population at the goldfields. Those scoundrels loafed and swindled and robbed whenever they found a chance—they were so many h u m a n beasts of prey, prowling and hungering about, flitting from place to place, and it required the exercise of m u c h vigilance and activity to guard against their depredations. T h e diggers had often to look after themselves, and they frequently did so with salutary effect, and the application of a dose of lynch law. But the Commissioners and their myrmidons had other work to do, and this they often did with a harshness that could not be palliated. In hunting up unlicensed diggers, and in their official intercourse with those w h o were licensed, ebullitions of temper were often indulged in, and even illegalities committed which could in no fairness be excused; and when satisfaction was sought from the higher powers, the appeal was in
