Page:The Eureka Stockade.djvu/12

2 When two boys are see-sawing on a plank, balanced on its centre, whilst the world around them is "up" with the one it is "down" with the other. The centre, however, is stationary. I was in the centre. I was an actor, and therefore an eye-witness. The events I relate, I did see them, pass before me. The persons I speak of, I know them face to face. The words I quote, I did hear them with my own ears. Others may know more or less than I; I mean to tell all that I know, and nothing more.

Two reasons counsel me to undertake the task of publishing this work; but a third reason is at the bottom of it, as the potent lever; and they are—

1st. An honourable ambition urging me to have my name remembered among the illustrious of Rome. I have, on reaching the fortieth year of my age, to publish a work at which I have been plodding the past eighteen years. An ocean of grief would overwhelm me if then I had to vindicate my character: how, under the hospitality of the British flag, I was put in the felon's dock of a British Supreme Court to be tried for high treason.

2nd. I have the moral courage to show the truth of my text above, because I believe in the resurrection of life.

3rd. Brave comrades in arms who fell on that disgraced Sabbath morning, December 3rd, worthy of a better fate, and most certainly of a longer remembrance, it is in my power to drag your names from an ignoble oblivion, and vindicate the unrewarded bravery of one of yourselves! He was once my mate, the bearer of our standard, the "Southern Cross." Shot down by a murderous hand, he fell and died struggling like a man in the cause of the diggers. But he was soon forgotten. That he was buried is known by the tears of a few true friends! the place of his burial is little known, and less cared for.

Sunt tempora nostra; non mutabimur nec mutamur in illis; jam perdidi spem.

The work will be published on: the 1st of December next, and given to each subscriber by the Author's own hand, on the site of the Eureka Stockade, from the rising to the setting of the sun, on the memorable third.

II.

A JOVE PRINCIPIUM.

" a Governor. Apply to the People of Victoria:" that was the extraordinary advertisement, a new chum in want of employment, did meet in the usual column of The Argus, December 1852. Many could afford to laugh at it, the intelligent however, who had immigrated here, permanently to better.his condition, was forced to rip up in his memory a certain fable of Æsop. Who would have dared