Edward Browne

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Bendigo Goldfields Petition Cover, August 1853. State Library of Victoria (MS 12440) and Condemned them to hard labor on the Public Roads of the Colony - A proceeding Your Petitioners maintain to be contrary to the spirit of the British Law which does not recognise the principle of the Subject being a Criminal because he is indebted to the State
That the impost of Thirty Shillings a Month is unjust because the successful and unsuccessful Digger are assessed in the same ratio
For these reasons and others which could be enumerated Your Petitioners pray Your Excellency to Grant the following Petition
* First. To direct that the Licence Fee be reduced to Ten Shillings a Month
* Secondly To direct that Monthly or Quarterly Licenses be issued at the option of the Applicants
* Thirdly To direct that new arrivals or invalids be allowed on registering their names at the Commissioners Office fifteen clear days residence on the Gold Fields before the License be enforced
* Fourthly To afford greater facility to Diggers and others resident on the Gold Fields who wish to engage in Agricultural Pursuits for investing their earnings in small allotments of land
* Fifthly To direct that the Penalty of Five Pounds for non-possession of License be reduced to One Pound
* Sixthly To direct that (as the Diggers and other residents on the Gold Fields of the Colony have uniformly developed a love of law and order) the sending of an Armed Force to enforce the License Tax be discontinued.
Your Petitioners would respectfully submit to Your Excellency's consideration in favour of the reduction of the License Fee that many Diggers and other residents on the Gold-fields who are debarred from taking a License under the present System would if the Tax were reduced to Ten Shillings a Month cheerfully comply with the Law so that the License Fund instead of being diminished would be increased
Your Petitioners would also remind your Excellency that a Petition is the only mode by which they can submit their wants to your Excellency's consideration as although they contribute more to the Exchequer that half the Revenue of the Colony they are the largest class of Her Majesty's Subjects in the Colony unrepresented
And your Petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray etc.
Red Ribbon Movement Monument in Rosalind Park, Bendigo [detail], 2013. Ballarat Heritage Services Picture Collection


Background

Edward George Browne was an Irishman who sailed to Australia from the United States of America. According to George Thomson,

Brown was by birth an Irishman, having been born at Bandon near Cork, had been fairly educated, and was a good Latin and a tolerable Greek scholar. He had been thrown early in life upon society without either trade and profession; all pursuits of a steady character were distasteful to him ... When quite a youth he landed upon the American shores ... Subsequently he drifted into Texas, at that time a wild region ... Ultimately the discovery of gold in Australia drew him to these shores ... He knew nothing of the goldfields grievances; but it was enough for him that they could be made the basis of an agitation of which he hoped to be leader and director ... He had no fixed principles of any kind, or business capacity for organization of any kind. He was always declamatory, never logical; his speeches were appeals to the passions of his auditors rather than to their reason ... with the crowd he had some influence, with the committee scarcely any. His imperious and dictatorial manner disgusted the men who formed that body.[1]

E.N. Emmett, along with Dr John Owens, George Thomson, William Denovan, Captain Edward Browne, Captain John Harrison, Robert Benson, Captain Baker, R.R. Haverfield, took a leading part on the anti-license agitation in Bendigo in 1853.[2]

Goldfields Involvement, 1853-1854

Edward Browne signed the 1853 Bendigo Goldfields Petition. Agitation of the Victorian goldfields started with the Forest Creek Monster Meeting in 1851, but what became known as the Red Ribbon Movement was centred around the Bendigo goldfields in 1853. The Anti-Gold License Association was formed at Bendigo in June 1853, led by George Thomson, Dr D.G. Jones and 'Captain' Edward Browne. The association focused its attention on the 30 shillings monthly licence fee miners were required to pay to the government. They drew up a petition outlining digger grievances and called for a reduced licence fee, improved law and order, the right to vote and the right to buy land. The petition was signed by diggers at Bendigo, Ballarat, Castlemaine, McIvor (Heathcote), Mount Alexander (Harcourt) and other diggings. The 13 metre long petition was presented to Lieutenant-Governor Charles La Trobe in Melbourne on the 01 August 1853, but their call for a reduction in monthly licence fees and land reform for diggers was rejected. The diggers dissatisfaction erupted into the Red Ribbon Rebellion where agitators wore red ribbons on their hats symbolising their defiance of the law and prohibitive licence fees.


Edward George Browne was a spokesman for the Bendigo Anti-Gold License Association. While visiting Ballarat he urged diggers to petition for government for a reduction in license fees.[3]

The Red Ribbon

Agitators involved in the Red Ribbon movement (who sported red ribbons in their hats to symbolise their defiance of the law and the prohibitive licence fees imposed on lucky and unlucky miners alike) organised the Bendigo Goldfields Petition in mid-1853.

The miner’s used the colour red to signify unity and defiance against an unjust government. On 27 August 1853, ten thousand miner’s peacefully protested against the despised 30 shilling mining licence fee. Governor Charles La Trobe had rejected an earlier petition to axe the fee. Following the agitation, he agreed to removal of the fee for the month of September. Civil liberties and injustices continued until the height of agitations in 1854 at the Eureka Rebellion. [4]

Diggers Flag of 1853, 2013, from the Bendigo Monument in Rosalind Park.


Forest Creek, 2nd September, 1853,
Yesterday being the 1st of the month, the excitement at Bendigo was most intense. Almost every digger had the red ribbon in his hat, as token of a favorable disposition to the reduction of the license-tax. Several of the storekeepers and parties well inclined to the Government had taken out their license during the latter end of last month. About 12 o'clock yesterday an express was received from the Government by Mr. Chief Commissioner Wright, to the effect that the license fee was to be suspended for this month, and the following notice was accordingly posted about the diggings:
GOVERNMENT NOTICE.
His Excellency the Lieutenant-Governor has been pleased to notify that it having been decided to propose, without delay, another mode of raising a revenue in lieu of that now derived from the gold-field, this measure will at once be presented to the Legislative Council; but in the meantime no compulsory means shall be adopted for the enforcement of the license for the month or September.
Several persons having applied for protection against violence, which has been threatened to them, all orderly persons are assured that ample means are at the disposal of the authorities for that purpose, and that prompt aid may be relied on whenever necessary.
(Signed)
W. R. WRIGHT.
Commission's Camp Sandhurst
During my stay at Bendigo on Thursday evening, everything appeared quiet, and the diggers evinced every satisfaction at the step taken by the Government, and up to Thudday night everything went on orderly/
At two o'clock, Captain Brown, the delegate and projector of the anti-license movement, was arrested under warrant at the instance of a Mr. William Adams, | for the offence alleged in the following information.
The information and complaint of William Adams, of Commissioner's Flat, storekeeper, taken on oath this 29th day of August, in the year or our Lord, Ono thousand eight hundred and fifty-three, before me the undersigned, one of Her Majesty's Justices of the Peace and for the said colony.
This afternoon the 29th inst., between four and five o'clock I was in the tent called the Sailor's Home, when a person commonly called Captain Brown, asked me for a subscription for the purpose of carrying out the expenses of the Delegates, and said, "all you have given me is a paltry two and sixpence, I know you have always been opposed to our views and the movement. You are a marked man, and look out to have your store pulled down about your ears on Thursday morning. I can get 20,00 men to back me when I like, in anything I wish to carry out; and it is only for me to speak to get plenty of men to do what I tell them"; and said that "If they took a store down he did not approve of, he would empanel a jury and hang the man on the first tree he came to. That he would have lynch-law," he added, "I do not care if I am lagged for it, for I have plenty of means." And added, " I shall give myself up on Thursday."
When Captain Brown spoke of the paltry two-and sixpence, I suppose he alluded to the circumstance when he was going down to Melbourne to wait on the Governor, he came to my store, and bought a coat and shirt, out of which I gave him. 2s 6d. He asked me then to put my name down as a subscriber for the 2s, 6d, which I refused.
At the time Brown was talking with me in the Sailor's Home this afternoon, a man came in with red ribbon in his hat. Brown addressed him saying, "Will you be ready to take away Mr. Adams's traps on Thursday!" Afterwards he remarked, "that private oonversation was private conversation, and public conversation public, and wished what had passed between us should be private, and told me that a certain storekeeper had given him 2/. this afternoon.
WM. ADAMS.
Taken and sworn this 29th August, before me at Sandhurst.
L. M'LACHLAN, P. M.
On the opening of the police court at two o'clock, Captain Brown was brought forward to answer the above charge, but owing to the absence of Mr Adams, the captain remanded, but admitted to bail himself in 200/., and two sureties in 100/. each.
After the arrest of Captain Brown, the authorities took the precaution to station mounted troopers at various parts throughout the diggings, to guard against any movement which might be maid to rescue the captain, but no movement was viable up to five o'clock that evening.
During the whole of last week the mounted police patrolled the Bendigo diggings, no doubt with the intention of keeping in check any outbreak which might occur. Since the above notice is reference to the sus. pension of the license tax had been posted up, this war like array has in part disappeared, and no doubt the military, foot and mounted polite, with the field-piece, will soon disappear, unless the Government intend keeping the three pieces of artillery with a strong force permanently on the Bendigo. Several of the detachments of soldiers from Forest Creek have returned to their respective quarters.
At Castlemaine, on Saturday but, a meeting was held, and the resolutions adopted at the public meeting at Bendigo, were acted upon, vis, the presentation of 10s. as the future license fee. The reply of the Commissioner was to the effect that the 10s. could not be accepted, and unless the 30s. was paid, all unlicensed diggers would be punished as the law directed. On Wednesday another meeting was held, and the conclusion arrived at was that a petition should be forwarded to the Legislature, praying for a reduction of the tax, and that the Government be requested to allow fifteen days' grace for taking out the licenses, so that a reply to the petition may be received. In answer to the letter which was handed in to Resident Commissioner Captain Bull, that gentleman informed them, that he should submit the petition and letter to Mr. Wright, but in the meantime nothing could be done for them. On the following day, the notices were posted about, which did away with both the petition and the time of grace.[5]

Post 1854 Experiences

See also

Bendigo Goldfields Petition

Ireland

Further Reading

Corfield, J., Wickham, D., & Gervasoni, C. The Eureka Encyclopaedia, Ballarat Heritage Services, 2004.


References

  1. Thomson, Leaves from the diary of an old Bendigonian of 1853, pp. 35-6; A. C. Messner, Rethinking Red-Ribbon Protest: Bendigo 1853-4, 2000, accessed by Dorothy Wickham 13 July 2020, https://rune.une.edu.au/web/bitstream/1959.11/15176/6/open/SOURCE08.pdf.
  2. G. Mackay, History of Bendigo, Lerk and McClure, 2000.
  3. Corfield, J., Wickham, D., & Gervasoni, C. The Eureka Encyclopaedia, Ballarat Heritage Services, 2004.
  4. Bendigo Weekly, 27-Aug-2013.
  5. The Argus, 5 September 1853.

External links



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