Page:Victoria, with a description of its principal cities, Melbourne and Geelong.djvu/136

 have been the case when we consider that, amongst the more enterprising class, who constituted the vast majority of the diggers, there were found many who had been repealers, chartists, and socialists,—the warm-blooded Italian, the determined, free-thinking German, and the liberty-declaiming American, always sympathizing with any rising discontent, aiding and abetting any undertaking to overturn the restraints put on them by law. It is obvious, therefore, that such a population called for a good system of government, and for a most prudent administration; for, even if the police force had been at all analogous to such a body at home, the objectionable system of the daily or hourly visit to the digger, uncongenial as it was to the feelings of the free man, might yet have been administered in such a way as to produce little more than what is felt at paying taxes everywhere. The people at the Gold Fields were made to feel that the police occupied the position of masters over them, and their general demeanour carried out the feeling.

Forming our opinion from the great majority of the most moderate men of those times, we cannot come to any other conclusion; and, from the opinion of the Board of Inquiry, there is but little doubt of the power being used imprudently. The license-hunting was then, in fact, the great grievance of the Gold Fields.

Still, other circumstances tended to separate the people from the local Government. Constant