Over the fathomless grey seas that tossed between, dissevering the
ancient and gigantic continent from the tiny motherland, unsettling
rumours ran. After close on forty years' fat peace, England had armed
for hostilities again, her fleet set sail for a foreign sea. Such was
the news the sturdy clipper-ships brought out, in tantalising fragments; and those who, like Richard Mahony, were mere birds-of-passage in the colony, and had friends and relatives going to the front, caught hungrily at every detail. But to the majority of the colonists what England had done, or left undone, in preparation for war, was of small account. To them the vital question was: will the wily Russian Bear take its revenge by sending men-of-war to annihilate us and plunder the gold in our banks--us, months removed from English aid? And the opinion was openly expressed that in casting off her allegiance to Great Britain, and becoming a neutral state, lay young Australia's best hope of safety.
But, even while they made it, the proposers of this scheme were knee-deep
in petty, local affairs again. All Europe was depressed under the
cloud of war; but they went on belabouring hackneyed themes--the
unlocking of the lands, iniquitous licence-fees, official corruption. Mahony could not stand it. His heart was in England, went up and down with England's hopes and fears. He smarted under the tales told of the inefficiency of the British troops and the paucity of their numbers; under the painful disclosures made by journalists, injudiciously allowed to travel to the seat of war; he questioned, like many another of his class in the old country, the wisdom of the Duke of Newcastle's orders to lay siege to the port of Sebastopol. And of an evening, when the store was closed, he sat over stale English newspapers and a map of the Crimea, and meticulously followed the movements of the Allies.
But in this retirement he was rudely disturbed, by feeling himself
touched on a vulnerable spot--that of his pocket. Before the end of the
year trade had come to a standstill, and the very town he lived in was
under martial law.
On both Ballarat and the Bendigo the agitation for the repeal of the
licence-tax had grown more and more vehement; and spring's arrival found
the digging-community worked up to a white heat. The new Governor's tour
of inspection, on which great hopes had been built, served only to
aggravate the trouble. Misled by the golden treasures with which the
diggers, anxious as children to please, dazzled his eyes, the Governor
decided that the tax was not an outrageous one; and ordered licence-raids
to be undertaken twice as often as before. This defeat of the
diggers' hopes, together with the murder of a comrade and the acquittal
of the murderer by a corrupt magistrate, goaded even the least sensitive
spirits to rebellion: the guilty man's house was fired, the police were
stoned, and then, for a month or more, deputations and petitions ran to
and fro between Ballarat and Melbourne. In vain: the demands of the
voteless diggers went unheard. The consequence was that one day at the
beginning of summer all the troops that could be spared from the
capital, along with several pieces of artillery, were raising the dust
on the road to Ballarat.
On the last afternoon in November work was suspended throughout the
diggings, and the more cautious among the shopkeepers began to think of
closing their doors. In front of the "Diggers' Emporium," where the
earth was baked as hard as a burnt crust, a little knot of people stood
shading their eyes from the sun. Opposite, on Bakery Hill, a monster
meeting had been held and the "Southern Cross" hoisted--a blue bunting
that bore the silver stars of the constellation after which it was
named. Having sworn allegiance to it with outstretched hands, the rebels
were lining up to march off to drill.
Mahony watched the thin procession through narrowed lids. In theory he
condemned equally the blind obstinacy of the authorities, who went on
tightening the screw, and the foolhardiness of the men. But--well, he
could not get his eye to shirk one of the screaming banners and
placards: "Down with Despotism!" "Who so base as be a Slave!" by means
of which the diggers sought to inflame popular indignation. "If only
honest rebels could get on without melodramatic exaggeration! As it is, those good fellows yonder are rendering a just cause ridiculous."