Hurrah! for the diggers.
'The Argus' persisting in 'our own conceit,' and misrepresenting, perverting,
and slandering the cause of the diggers, ran foul, and went fast to leeward.
Experience having instructed me at my own costs, that there cannot possibly
exist much sympathy between flunkies and blueshirts, I can only guess
at the compound materials hammered in the mortar of 'The Argus' reporter
on Ballaarat: -
lst. The land is the Queen's, and the inheritance of the Crown.
2nd. Who dares to teach the golden-lace the idea how to shoot?
3rd. Let learning, commerce, even manners die, But leave us our old nobility.
4th. 'Sotto voce': - In this colony, however, make money; honestly if possible,
of course, but make money; or else the 'vagabonds' here would humble down
a gentleman to curry-powder diet.
5th. To put on a blue shirt, and rush in with the Eureka mob! fudge:
'odi profanum vulgus et arceo.' There are millions of tons of gold dug out
already, as much anyhow, as anyone can carry to Old England, and live
as a lord, with an occasional trip to Paris and Naples, to make up for
the time wasted in this colony.
Sum total. - Screw out of the diggers as much as circumstances will admit;
they have plenty of money for getting drunk, and making beasts of themselves,
the brutes!
To be serious; should a copy of this book be forgotten somewhere, and thereby
be spared for the use of some southern Tacitus, let him bewail the perfidious
mendacity of our times, whose characteristic is SLANDER, which proceeds
from devil GROG; and the pair generate THE PROSPERITY OF THE WICKED.
Here is a sample:-
On Saturday, September 29th, 1854, the members of the Local Court, Ballaarat,
held a public meeting on the usual spot, Bakery-hill, for the purpose of
taking the sense of their fellow miners, respecting the admittance
or nonadmittance of the legal profession to advise or plead in said court. -
See report in The Star, a new local paper, No. V, Tuesday, October 2nd.
Messrs. Ryce and Wall having addressed the meeting in their usual honest,
matter-of-fact way:-
"Great Works" was shouted and immediately appeared
C. Raffaello, member of the Local Court. He hoped,
that if there were any Goodenough present that they
would see and not mislay their notes while he briefly
brought three things before the meeting; the first
concerned the meeting and himself, the second concerned
himself, and the third concerned those present. The
first was easily disposed of - have I, as I promised,
done my duty as member of the Local Court to your
satisfaction? (Yes, and cheers.) Very well, the second
matter concerns myself - personally he was under no
obligations to the lawyers - the services he received
at the trial was done to him as a state prisoner,
and not to Carboni Raffaello individually; when
individually, he requested to be supplied with six
pennyworth of snuff by Mr. Dunne, it was promised,
but it never came to him.
