A Leader at Eureka

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIV, Issue 13, 29 March 1906, Page 2

A Leader at Eureka

A brief cable message in last week's daily papers announced the passing of John Lynch, the last of the leaders trf what is known in Victorian history as the Eureka Stockade Riot. Our friend of other days has, in a green and erect old age, crossed the bar and sung bis last rondeau :—: — ' My barque, that late with buoyant prow The sunny waves did gaily plough, Now, through the sunset's fading £$learn, Drifts dimly shoreward in a dream, I feel the land breeze on my brow.' John Lynch was right in the vortex of the most stirring times in Australian history. He was 'on ' Ballarat (to use a miner's phrase) in the days when happy pick-strokes opened up the coveted glories of the famous 4 jewellers' shops,' where the gold lay in dust, in girains, and in lumps from the size of a pea to that of an emu egg ; when a wild inrush of population from the ends of the earth drew a population of 40,000 souls to the banks of the yellow Yarrowee ; and when the great transformation scene took place in the history of Australia. He was one cf those who took an active part in the angry agitation 'against the high mining-license fee of thirty shillings (for a time £3) per month. The grievance of the miners was intensified by the famine prices then ruling, and by the exasperating methods by which the fee was collected — and especially biy the grand battues known as ' digger-hunts,' in which brigades of police (white and black), plain-clothes constables, spies, informers, etc., took a generally ignoble and irritating part.

The increased acrimony thrown into the diggerhunts strengthened the hands of a strong and active minority of the Victorian miners who held that the time had come to abandon constitutional agitation and win their rights by armed resistance. Among the leaders of this party were Peter Lalor (afterwards Speaker of the Legislative Assembly), Verne (a Hanoverian), Kennedy (a Scotsman), Carboni Raffaello (an Italian), James Esmond (the discoverer of the first payable gold-field in Victoria), and, among others, 'Jchn Lynch. They armed, drilled, and prepared for the fray. Troops were hurried up from Melbourne. While they were tr.arrlpiing la^ong on their dusty Uvay, Captain Thomas, commanding the Ballarat garrison, moved out one morning (December 3, 1851) before daybreak with 276 infantry and mounted men upon the ill-guarded camp of the insurgent miners. It was a rough stockade of slabs, ropes, and overturned carts at the Eureka, enclosing about an acre of ground. Martial law had not been proclaimed ; the Riot Act had not been read ; comparatively few of the armed diggers were in the camp ; and they were caught napping. There was a short, sharp struggle. Four soldiers had their souls shot out. A few more were wounded. Of the miners, thirty-five to forty were slain— the Irfsh pikemen suffering most. A hundred and twenty-five were made prisoners. The whole aflair was over in twenty-five minutes. Lalor was severely wounded. He escaped through, the devotion of his followers, and a proffered Government reward of £500 failed" to brioe the poor and penniless friends who sheltered him.

* The news of the Eureka Stockade affair swept like a hurricane through Australia. Public sympathy, expressed in mass meetings in Victoria, surged on a high tide in favor of the miners' demands. Early in the following year (1855) the prisoners were arraigned for high treason. They were acquitted amidst the frantic plaudits of the multitudes inside and outside the court. A general amnesty followed. The monthly license-fee was abolished, and in its stead there was issued a miner,' s-right at twenty shillings (subsequently reduced to five shillings) a year.' And the place of the hated Goldfields Commissicners was taken by Local Courts,

Mining Boards, and Wardens' Courts. The crowning * result of the Stockade insurrection was the separation of Victoria from the Mother Colony of New South Wales, and the granting of a new Constitution, which received the royal assent on July 21, 1855. Humfiray (the leader of the peace party), and Lalor (the Rienzi of the party of armed resistance), were" elected as the first representatives of Ballarat. In 18>99 Lalor resigned ' His faded form To waste and worm.' A grateful country could scarcely do more gracious honoc to his memory than to make saucepans of the hideous bewigged bronze effigy that was erected in TTie principal street < f Ballarat to preserve the fame of his name. A few pounds of '' live ' dynamite might also be ' placed ' to much advantage underneath the ' monument ' that mark's the spot where the armed diggers won the liberties of Victoria at the Eureka. Both ' monuments ' are strident instances of the well-meant thought that might (and ought) to have been expressed differently.