Archibald Forbes

Notes

EUREKA STOCKADE.

“An Old Digger” (remarks the Australasian) gives his recollections of the fight at the Eureka Stockade, with the view of correcting the errors of Mr Archibald Forbes, who has written a magazine article on the subject, under the title of “ A For-gotten Rebellion.” The old digger who corrects Mr Forbes errs in the opposite direction, trying to belittle a rising that was of historical value, and dismissing it as the work of “ Tips,” Vandemonians, and vagabonds. “ Tips” was a short name for Tipperary boys. Had the influence which produced the Eureka riot been of purely local origin there would have been no stockade building, no drilling, and no fight. It was the outcome of discontent that prevailed throughout the goldfields, and the Ballarat rioters had behind them the sympathy and support, whatever might be its moral value, of thousands of diggers. The rising was a mad one, and we have no intention of praising it, but there was excuse for It. It occurred during times when we were under a form of government that the people were disgusted with, and the ruling authorities were quite incapable of dealing with a state of things and a time of universal excitement which was past understanding, which took them by surprise, and came altogether against their will. They would rather not have had the great gold rush. They tried to govern the digging population like grandchildren. In regard to the mining licenses, the great cause of irritation was the practice of coming suddenly upon the digger and demanding his papers, and if he had not them in his pocket he was marched off to the logs. No men in these days would stand the exasperating trials the diggers were subjected to for their supposed good. And while the authorities were keen in the chase after miners without licenses they had not always time for checking real crime. Where the old digger describes the things he saw his testimony is valuable, but judgment is prejudiced and his conclusions narrow. For instance, it is interesting to hear how the lemonade seller mounted the stockade and cheered on the rioters, but nonsense to credit him with being the real leader. The real leaders were men like Peter Lalor and Raffaello, afterwards a general under Garibaldi. The reference to the reported schemes for making Victoria a Papal republic is ridiculous, Mr Lalor was never a docile son of the church; no doubt the riff raff element was strongly represented in the rank and file, but it was not a rising of blackguards, and Mr Lalor was no demagogue, as was shown by his subsequent Parliamentary career, which (except during the Berry regime) was for the most part that of a constitutionalist. Neither was there any identity between the conduct of the Ballarat rioters and the policy and practice of the ’Clan-na-Gael or the modern dynamiters. The Ballarat rioters came into the open, and faced the risk like men; they did not plot in dark caverns or send out sneaks to drop an explosive and run, care less how many innocent lives they took.. The Ballarat rioters may have been mad and brutal, but they were not miscreants or cowards, and the “ explanation” the old digger got from the pioneer as to how the verdict of not guilty was arrived at is an answer in itself to all the arguments in his article, viz., that it was a protest against wretched governing.

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