Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/86

 Natives' Association,' in one of his addresses before that body, declared 'that, for the first time in his life, he felt ashamed of his native country.' That feeling was shared by many of his compatriots, as day after day the telegrams of the leading journals added another to the list of woolsheds deliberately set on fire, of others defended by armed men—sometimes, indeed, unsuccessfully.

When the directors of the Proprietary Silver Mine at Broken Hill saw fit to diminish the number of miners, for which there was not sufficient employment, it was beleaguered by an armed and threatening crowd of five thousand men. A real siege was enacted. No one was allowed to pass the lines without a passport from the so-called President of the Miners' Committee.

For three days and nights, as the Stipendiary Magistrate stated (he was sent up specially by the New South Wales Government, trusting in his lengthened experience and proved capacity), the inmates of the mine-works sat with arms in their hands, and without changing their clothes, hourly expectant of a rush from the excited crowd.

The crisis was, however, tided over without bloodshed, chiefly owing, in the words of a leading metropolitan journal, to the 'admirable firmness and discretion' displayed by the official referred to—now, alas! no more. He died in harness, fulfilling his arduous and responsible duties to the last, with a record of half a century of official service in positions of high responsibility, without a reflection in all that time having been cast upon his integrity, his courage, or his capacity.

More decisive action was taken, and was compelled to be taken, in Queensland than in the other colonies.

There, owing to the enormous areas necessarily occupied by the Pastoralists, the immense distances separating the holdings from each other, and, perhaps, the heterogeneous nature of the labour element, the acts of lawlessness became more serious and menacing. A military organisation was therefore found to be necessary. Volunteers were enrolled. Large bodies of these troops and of an armed constabulary force were mobilised, and many of the incidental features of a civil war were displayed to a population that had rarely seen firearms discharged in anger.

The nomadic population had been largely recruited from