9 The Monster Meeting

Carboni WAS IN A PENSIVE MOOD as he sat down in his tent on Eureka to write again to Archer. It was Thursday, 30 November, and he had returned from Creswick on the previous Monday. The League had called a monster meeting for Wednesday, with placards printed at the Times office and spread all over the fields. Word had come of the result of the delegation to Hotham and his rebuttal of the demands had spread like wildfire. Carboni, with sadness, reflected on how humiliating it was to be called upon to assemble, not to give God thanks for His mercies, nor even to rejoice over a bounteous first harvest or vintage on this golden land, but, as ‘in olden times in the old country’,‘For the Redress of Grievances’.1

Tuesday of that week was a busy day in Ballarat. For almost the whole of the population it meant the taking up of sides. It was not that many had to spend much time weighing the rights and wrongs of the matter. To Rede and Thomas, and to their subordinates in the Camp, it was a question of doing their duty, and they all knew that their path lay in the maintenance of law and order, as defined in England and interpreted in Victoria. Many of them had come from homes in which subjection to power in the form of landed or monied interests was fundamental to existence. But that mattered now not at all, nor did it count that many were mere boys whose fleeting grasp on life would be put in jeopardy were battle joined. What threw all else into the shade was an oath sworn, obedience demanded, allegiance owed to an authority symbolized in their flag and, finally, a certain esprit de corps which, in the end, came down to the dependence of each upon the other for survival.

For Commissioner Rede all was clear. He had been told on Saturday, by a ‘reliable source’, that a body of men planned to attack the Camp and drive the officials off the field if the prisoners were not released. When the attack was expected, whether immediately or in a few days’ time, he could not be sure. In his report to Melbourne he enclosed a copy of the Ballarat Times. He pointed to an article which said that Wednesday would be the day for something to occur and asked for an opinion of the Attorney-General ‘as it appears to be highly seditious’. He thought the use of such language should be stopped if it seemed profitable to do so.

On Monday he wrote again to the Chief Commissioner in Melbourne. Father Smyth had visited him, presumably on Sunday evening or Monday morning. Strictly enjoining that his name be not used, the priest had informed Rede that the Camp was in great danger of a general assault and that ‘measures had been arranged so as to make [the government] the aggressors’. Smyth also alleged that the diggers were much better organized than had been imagined, with a thousand rifles ready to be brought together and that, on one occasion, it had been possible to assemble 900 men with the intention of an attack. Later, it seems, Smyth met Samuel Furnell, Sub-Inspector of Police, to whom he was well known from their previous association on the Beechworth fields. Smyth had much more to tell ‘but feared to do so’. He was aghast because things were in a state infinitely more dreadful than the Camp authorities imagined and ‘the only people not mixed up in it . . . are the English’, while the rest were determined characters who had resolved ‘to put down the Government at all costs’. Finding himself in such straits, the young cleric had been moved to write to his Bishop for instructions.

Such valuable information would have satisfied most men, even though a good deal of it had been fabricated either by Rede or Smyth, for at no time had it been possible to assemble a thousand riflemen, trained or untrained, on Ballarat. But Rede, perhaps understandably if this were the extent of his information, had ‘something more ominous than anything else’ to impart. Acting on instructions, he had tried to bribe information from whomsoever could give it. To Rede’s astonishment such activity proved fruitless, and Smyth and the nameless ‘reliable’ source of his Saturday letter were his only informants. What seemed to irritate him almost beyond words was the lamentable state of peace that prevailed, for ‘to all appearance the digging population is as quiet and well disposed as ever’. A certain madness seemed to have come over the poor Commissioner, sitting in his Camp with all in readiness. Everyone, even the clerks and bookkeepers, had been ‘formed into a band’ and Rede was confident that, in the event of an attack, every man would do his duty. But such complacency was not at all satisfactory for it meant that in the Camp everyone had to stand around idly awaiting the onslaught.

The Commissioner was absolutely clear that there was only one way out of the impasse and that ‘nothing but crushing the agitation movement’ could do it. Word had come through that an act of defiance in the form of licence burning was contemplated, and that the diggers were trying to form a cavalry corps, proved by the theft of a government-owned horse. Yet here he was with an officer in charge of the military in whom he had no confidence, spies who could bring him no information, and little to do except sweat and fume in the heat of late November. It was all becoming too much for a loyal servant of the Crown who saw clearly what had to be done, but was prevented from action by the niceties of a still civilized order of things.2

To the diggers, whose focal point stood in full view of the Camp across the valley of the Yarrowee, things were not so simple. They had no recognized leadership except for a committee, no oaths had been sworn or repudiated, no preparation yet made for battle in the form of arms or drilling. Certainly they had a flag, and they also had a cause to unite them, yet even this cause seemed to lack substance outside of the continued imprisonment of their mates in Melbourne. The franchise, the land, the licence fee—all of these were grievances, but they were not a cause even in conjunction. The symbol of their cause lay more in its rejection, for the very presence of such armed might across the valley meant either the diggers acquiesced in subjection, or they refused to acquiesce and were put to the test. Perhaps the act of resistance to the force of arms would suffice to temper or even remove the misuse of authority—perhaps not. In any case it was clear to the diggers that some stand had to be made if they were to preserve even a remnant of human dignity and personal integrity, although most still hoped that the time for testing had not yet, and would not, come. There is not a shred of evidence that the committee of the Reform League, which was still recognized as paramount on Ballarat among the diggers, had any intention of attacking the Camp, or that the means to do so were at hand. On the contrary, it is clear that Rede was correct in telling Melbourne that he was in charge of a field in which peace and good order prevailed.

On the same Monday upon which Robert Rede wrote to Wright, a Melbourne citizen named Christophers wrote to Hotham. It was not the first letter from this little-known man of meagre business interests, but it was one which assuredly merited something more than the ‘Put away’ which Hotham pencilled on its margin. Christophers retained great faith in Hotham, but he could no longer tolerate the Governor’s inability to comprehend that it was precisely because he had no part in the cabal of old colonists, squatters and bureaucrats ‘that he had been chosen to govern the colony’. Surely Hotham could see from the very beginning that those men had chosen to ‘cajole, to misguide and destroy’ him. Christophers reminded him that he had not yet nailed his colours of ‘Honesty’ and ‘Rights of the People’ to the mast, and that honour itself and other matters of greater import than his own life depended upon his so doing. Others besides Rede and Hotham clearly knew what was in preparation on Monday, 27 November, and what a fate had been decreed for the men of Ballarat, for Christophers spoke to the Governor in measures reminiscent of the prophets of old as they addressed their tyrants:

Under the malignant and stupid influence and counsel of your Ministers, you now cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of War; yet I would implore you and pray to God that your hands may not be imbued in blood—in the blood of your fellow subjects, of those who demand that justice and law [you] yourself told them were their rights. Now that Britain is at war against even foreign oppression do you think the British people or the Queen of England will thank you, even if you prove successful in putting down the present rebellion, so called, by the shedding of blood, every drop of which will be so much seed sown to fructify into successful rebellion, and to hasten a painful separation from the fatherland?3

The dogs of war let slip by Hotham included a contingent of two officers and eight men of the 12th Regiment, accompanied by wagons carrying ammunition and other baggage. It reached the outskirts of Ballarat on the Tuesday evening, entering into the field from the Melbourne road. As a consequence it had to pass by and, in part, over the Eureka. Under an inexperienced and imprudent leader it fell among enraged diggers who saw its intrusion as further proof of the determination of the government to rule them by force of arms. A violent skirmish broke out: wagons were upturned and heads broken; the drummer boy was seriously wounded in the groin; and an elderly American, George Young of Massachusetts, cruelly molested as he tried to protect his wagons. His fate was much lamented by his upright, fellow Americans who did not ask whether Young’s involvement in these preparations for war had been otherwise than voluntary and based on pecuniary interests. Carboni regarded the regiment’s performance as ‘injudicious, triumphant riding, that by God’s mercy alone, was not turned into a vast funeral’. Given the entry point of the soldiers it was curious that the Eureka men did not seem to be involved but in fact, according to Carboni, ‘a party of Gravel-pits men had been put in the bush for the purpose’. To him it was both ‘cowardly’ and ‘disgraceful’, but he had not yet witnessed the military itself in action.4

While Mr Young was engaged in preserving fife and property, his fellow Americans were indulging in an evening of pleasant conviviality at the Victoria Hotel. It was a dinner to mark Thanksgiving day, but Tarleton, the guest of honour, used it to make public avowal of the loyalty of the Americans and to exhort them ‘to abstain from interference in the present agitation’, while assuring them that the Governor had been pleased hitherto with their conduct. He expressed the fervent hope that such approval would continue to be merited. All of this hyperbole was met with a vast wave of enthusiastic clapping, while Dr Kenworthy and others gave vent to similar exhortations, culminating in a toast to ‘The Diggers of Victoria’ and a warning about ‘the evils of the present agitation’. Robert Rede was also present, but had to be called away before the toast to the Queen, to which he had been chosen to reply. Word came to him at the table, while Tarleton was giving forth, that the troops had been ordered out from the Camp in response to the attack on the party of the 12th Regiment, so he addressed the assembled Americans very briefly and left. An Englishman was quickly discovered among the guests just as the American, who was in the chair, stood ready to reply to the loyal toast. The Englishman, whose name has not been recorded, made a brief but pretty job of it. ‘While I and my fellow colonists claim to be and are thoroughly loyal to our sovereign lady the Queen, we do not and will not respect her men servants, her maid servants, her oxen or her Asses’. It is a matter for conjecture as to how Tarleton expected to keep his Americans in some semblance of meek submission to the representatives of the Queen in Ballarat in the face of such sentiments held by some of her very own subjects. Fortunately he was not present to hear the Englishman, as he too had rushed off to the Camp to find how things were faring.5

Later that evening, probably much later given the events that had transpired, Rede wrote two letters to Melbourne. He reported on the safe arrival of 8 officers and 248 men from the 40th and the 12th Regiments, plus one Royal Engineer. Two more officers and 37 men of the mounted police had also arrived, making a total of 295 for the day, which assuredly gave pause for thought to anyone talking sedition in the tents and huts of the diggers. To Rede, with 435 officers and men under arms, it was all a source of very considerable comfort for he now had ample means to effect whatever purpose he deemed fit. Captain Charles Pasley was among the new arrivals of the day. Thirty years of age, English and an engineer, he came to Victoria in September 1853. He became, in rapid turn, colonial engineer, member of the Legislative Council and captain in the Royal Engineers. A young man of forthright and steady views, he quickly put himself at the disposal of Captain Thomas as his second in command. Captain Henry Christopher Wise led 106 men of the 40th Regiment which, together with 39 mounted police, came up from Geelong. They were more fortunate than the 12th because they came in from the south and did not have to pass over the Eureka. Hoots were heard and stones thrown, but Wise ordered his men to dismount and march to the Camp with fixed bayonets. That trip up to Ballarat through the quiet valley of the Moorabool was the last Captain Wise had to make in this life. Lieutenant Gardyne led the mounted troops from Melbourne and Gisborne, but they were able to canter quickly through the fields and, meeting with a warm reception, did not need to draw swords. Lieutenant John Hall was a mounted officer of the 40 th and he met no trouble at all as he came across from Castlemaine, passed through Creswick where all was quiet, and came into the Camp from the north. Rede gave only a summary of all this movement of men and arms, which he left to Pasley to report in detail. The Commissioner wished to concentrate on the attack on the 12th by ‘a mob’ and to set out his plans in respect of the mass meeting called for the following day, Wednesday, 29 November.

He proposed to send along a magistrate, accompanied by other dependable persons, who would report to him immediately if anything seditious was said, or if any advice was given to the diggers to commit an illegal act. Were that to happen, he would take out all possible forces without putting the Camp at risk, call upon all to disperse, read the Riot Act, arrest the speakers and, if a shot were fired or a policeman handled roughly, he would call upon the military to step in and settle matters. All this he thought absolutely necessary ‘to maintain order and give confidence to the well disposed’. He would do what he could to act legally but hoped he would receive Hotham’s support were he, under such ‘peculiar and pressing circumstances’, to ‘overstep the exact line’. He lamented that he had received no instructions, nor an opinion from the Crown law officers, on the precise extent of his powers in the case of sedition. He concluded by urging strongly that Seekamp be arrested and taken to Melbourne for his seditious article in the Ballarat Times in the previous week.6

Rede’s previous engagement with the Americans weighed heavily on him, despite the unruly behaviour of the Ballarat ‘mob’ and its effect on the troops and police. His second letter addressed itself to the impression left upon his agitated mind by what had transpired at the Thanksgiving dinner. He was quick to state that Tarleton deserved great praise for the manner in which he had urged his fellow Americans ‘to obey the laws and institutions of this country’. Nonetheless, Rede inclined to the belief that the Americans were engaged in a double game, by seeming to stand aloof from the events of Ballarat and, at the same time, to be acting in a most insidious manner by ‘urging the mob without shewing themselves’. He supposed that their behaviour was dictated by ‘the view of Americanizing this Colony’. Cautious enough to admit that his information concerning the nefarious behaviour of the Yankees may have been lacking in substance, he promised to do all he could to get to the heart of the matter.7

In such a manner the primary representative of the Queen on Ballarat had come to a state bordering on frenzy. On the one hand he had identified the source of rebellion or sedition as a mob. Who composed that mob he was not sure, except that in his view no true Briton stood amongst them. On the other hand he had begun to see suspects in all other quarters. It was not enough to single out the deplorable ruffians in their holes on the Eureka, such as the Tipperary men. As far as Rede was concerned, surely long history had taught any sound Englishman that sedition was second nature to the Irish! But then there was the question of what sedition meant. Was someone proposing an alternative form of loyalty to that owed by all to the Queen? The Americans seemed to offer the alternative: Americanization or, more pointedly, a republic. No wonder the Commissioner had concluded by Tuesday night that the game had to stop. He could put down his pen and go to bed, knowing that he had around him in abundance the wherewithal to deal with anything that Wednesday had to offer.

At ten on that morning Bishop Goold of Melbourne, together with the old Ballarat identity, Father Matthew Downing, arrived at Ballarat. They had travelled all night. The Bishop immediately contacted two digger leaders who appeared to be representative of the ‘different sections of the diggers and parties to the present movement’. In vain Goold pleaded with them to abandon the meeting which was called for that afternoon; all they offered him was the promise that they would do everything they could to keep it ‘within the bounds of peace and order’. They were loud in their complaints about the behaviour of the officials and Goold thought that, had some ‘kindness and forbearance’ been shown by the Camp, conciliation would have been readily achieved. ‘It is however now too late,’ he added. He saw clearly that the affair of Father Smyth’s servant—exacerbated as it was by the continual presence of Johnston on the field, the fact that the fine had remained fixed and the fact that their address had been met with cold contempt—had forced the Catholics ‘into the ranks of the disaffected’. He was writing his diary while the meeting was already in progress and he hoped to ‘God it terminate[d] peaceably’.8

Thirty-three thousand people were resident on the Ballarat field in that week ending 25 November 1854—an increase of 1,000 over the previous week. They had sent away by escort, or deposited in Ballarat, almost half a ton of gold in a matter of days, but had taken out less than 1,000 licences, all either quarterly or monthly. The Eureka was paying very well, while the Gravel Pits continued to be as ‘rich as ever’.9 The weather was fine, with the days clear, and it seemed no time for men of threatened material welfare to be idle, for none of them was on a salary. Yet once again they began to come together in thousands from all the local fields to gather on Bakery Hill. The large and flamboyant poster had been put up everywhere, and the fact that it was printed at the Ballarat Times office did nothing to enhance Seekamp’s reputation in the eyes of the Camp authorities. Proclaiming that it was time to have done with both the licence fee and despotism, and asking ‘Who so base as to be a slave?’, it called upon all the diggers, storekeepers and inhabitants to be present at 2 p.m. on that Wednesday. All were reminded that reports of the outcome of the deputation to Hotham would be given. They could also expect to hear from the delegates who had been sent to Creswick, Forest Creek and Bendigo to elicit support. The overall purpose of the meeting was to see to the attainment of the objects of the League, and the timid were reminded that, if they claimed the right to help frame the laws they lived under, they were bound solemnly to attend and let their voices be heard. At the end there was a Nota Bene: ‘Bring your licences, they may be wanted’.10 Whatever other emotions the document aroused in the majority of readers, it assuredly gave Rede little hope that the afternoon would pass without some form of seditious discourse being uttered.

The committee of the League had tried beforehand to iron out the differences between the advocates of moral and physical force. Humffray, back in time for the meeting, had argued with vigour for restraint but, as with Goold, it was now too late and a divided committee had to mount the platform in front of a crowd of between 10,000 and 12,000 people. Carboni was present and recorded his account of the events in his letter to Archer on the following day. Caustically he wrote, ‘I was the delegate of upwards of one thousand foreigners, or “aliens”, according to the superlative wisdom of your Legislative Council’. On the platform Timothy Hayes, chairman, was joined by the rest of the committee, the delegates to Hotham, reporters from Melbourne and Geelong, and the two priests, Downing and Smyth. The fact that the Catholic clergy in particular were afforded this distinction can only have resulted from their closeness to the diggers and their cause, and from the numerical strength of the Irish and Catholics on Ballarat and their association with the general grievances stemming from the treatment of Smyth and his servant. Henry Holyoake had not returned from Bendigo; indeed he was not heard of in the matter again, and it seemed also that, temporarily at least, the Creswick diggers were more intent upon the safety of their gold deposits than upon redressing grievances, given their Camp’s denuding of military and police. There was no word from Forest Creek either, so the meeting was able to proceed immediately to a hearing of the Melbourne delegates.11

George Black, who was never given to tainting his mother tongue with ‘colonial phraseology’, opened by proclaiming that Hotham was ‘in favour of the people’, but being ‘surrounded by injudicious advisers’ he was ‘entirely impotent in state matters’. As it was clear that the Governor was immovable in the face of their use of the word ‘demand’, it was now proposed to approach him with a more moderately phrased petition. This occasioned the first open breach between the committee, which had decided for conciliation, and the majority of the diggers, who wanted none of it. The diggers ‘furiously’ rejected the proposal on the ground that it did not sit well with the dignity of their League ‘first to demand and afterwards to pray’. Resistance to armed oppression had already run far ahead of the committee, which had been uninvolved in, and totally unaware of, the attack on the 12th Regiment on the previous evening, and was now content to temporize, praise the Governor and water down the demand, yet show some form of solidarity by the symbolic gesture of burning the licences. Humffray was opposed even to this act of defiance. In that moment he lost his moral hold over the diggers, who were determined to do something positive and palpable to confirm in public their rejection of the Camp in all its manifestations. His last words were a plaintive recollection of all the principles upon which his life was based, but they were now little more than empty rhetoric. Rede, Thomas and all those others gathered a few hundred yards away could scorn their meaning, but to the diggers the history of Ballarat since those halcyon days of late 1851 proved them to be cant. Humffray moved and Kennedy seconded:

That this meeting protests against the common practice of bodies of military marching into a peaceable district with fixed bayonets, and also any force, police or otherwise, firing on the people under any circumstances, without the previous reading of the Riot Act, and that if Government officials continue to act unconstitutionally, we cannot be responsible for similar or worse deeds from the people.12

Not to be outdone, Carboni also mounted the stump. He deplored how he had been forced to flee from ‘the hated Austrian rule’ to be confronted with this British form of despotism. Proclaiming his total rejection of the oppressor, under any guise, he called upon all, ‘irrespective of nationality, religion and colour’, to salute the Southern Cross as the ‘refuge of all the oppressed from all countries on earth’. Neither Carboni nor his hearers who cheered him to the echo were able to plumb the potency of the symbolism enshrined on Bakery Hill.

For the first time, at a public meeting, Peter Lalor came to the fore. His motion had clear implications for the power structure of the League and its future operations. Hitherto the committee had been of an ad hoc nature and, as such, was scarcely representative of the entire diggers’ movement. Lalor moved that, on Sunday, 3 December, at 2 p.m., a meeting be called at the Adelphi theatre to elect a new central committee composed of representatives for each fifty members of the League. The purpose and timing of this meeting were of considerable interest in the Camp. The fact that a newly constituted committee would, in all likelihood, be more radical than the present one could not pass unnoticed. In the event, the Adelphi theatre was never to host the Reform League. The hour of 2 p.m. on Sunday, 3 December, was beyond reckoning for many who had stood in their flesh and sinew at Bakery Hill at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, 29 November.

Vern, not unexpectedly, addressed himself to the ‘obnoxious licence fee’ which he declared to be ‘an imposition and an unjustifiable tax on free labour’. All were called upon to burn their licences as an immediate step towards the abolition of the fee and, as a ‘united people’, to defend and protect anyone arrested for having no licence. George Black, sensible to the last, pointed out that it would be absurd, having flouted the law, to turn to it for arbitration in the case of disputes arising between the diggers about claims. He moved that the diggers resolve to adjudicate their own disputes henceforth. Finally a first step was taken towards a closed shop, with a motion not to protect any man who, after 15 December, was not a member of the League. Father Downing left the platform disconsolate. He had spoken against the burning of the licences and was heard with patience and respect, but it was to both sullen and excited faces that he addressed his words. Those of his own devoted flock saw that the days of clerical moderation had passed and his proposal ‘fell to the ground’.

Timothy Hayes had had a good deal of experience with enthusiastic meetings which resulted in resolutions and nothing more. He seemed determined to ensure that some final affirmation of solidarity was achieved before concluding this one. The diggers were asked in their thousands to stand ready, to act and even to die, were they called upon to liberate any man taken to the lock-up for not being in possession of a licence. According to Carboni the affirmative clamour in response was ‘really deafening’. Tim, with the blood of the Gael hot within him, turned to poetry to wind up proceedings, unmindful perhaps that the poet can act the prophet when the auguries speak clearly:

On to the field, our doom is sealed,

To conquer or be slaves;

The sun shall see our country free,

Or set upon our graves.13

With a veritable bonfire of licence-burning, the meeting broke. No shot was fired by or upon the diggers; few words were spoken in anger, much less in sedition. One thing was clear. Words had now passed into actions. A good proportion of the diggers had rejected the most tangible operation of the law—the licence fee. All had pledged themselves to stand united in the event that the law should be determined to enforce its sanctions on licence-lacking diggers. How they would so stand—even where—had not yet been decided. But on Ballarat the old ways had run their time span, and there was no going back.