Page:Banking Under Difficulties- Or Life On The Goldfields Of Victoria, New South Wales And New Zealand (1888).pdf/50

Rh of continuing in the secondary official position under the squatting commissioners which had hitherto been the lot of the goldfields department, The Commission’s various recommendations were in the main carried out by the Government, and assisted by more auspicious years of digging that followed 1854, they inaugurated quite a new era for the important interests they affected. The goldfields population have since proved as loyal as the rest of the colony. If there have been a few rowdy incidents at elections, and on other exciting occasions, they may be accepted as a kind of local holiday-making to the rough industry of these busy localities, the more excusable, as they have seldom disturbed or disgraced the Government. The new regulations which were based upon the Commission’s report have since been in the main adopted in New South Wales, and still later in British Columbia and New Zealand.

“A measure of great political importance was involved in one of these regulations. The system of the miner’s right was tantamount in reality to the introduction of the principle of a manhood suffrage—a principle which was then conceded only to the special and difficult case of the mining population, but which between two and three years afterwards was formally adopted for the whole colony upon the concession of self-government.

“The more intelligent of the miners were constituted local justices of the peace; arrangements were made by which the mining districts elected their representatives to the Colonial Legislature; and above all, they found their leisure hours amply absorbed by attending to the new elective local boards, ordained for the purpose of framing the gold mining regulations. A general goldfields’ legislative measure, on which these local proceedings were based, was drawn up and passed in the year 1855. Three years afterwards this Act was further amended and enlarged, and a Minister of Mines was added to the Executive. We may add, however, that in 1868 another Government commission paid a visit of inspection and inquiry to the goldfields which resulted in a very elaborate report, suggesting further adaptations and reforms, chiefly in the direction of increased local legislation to meet the expanding wants and advancing interests of gold mining.”