Page:The Eureka Stockade.djvu/34

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sturdy sons who pant after the yellow-boy. "Take your chance, out of a score of shicers, there is one 'dead on it,'" says old Mother Earth from the deep.

Sum total.—With the hard-working gold-digger, there is a solid barter possible. Hurrah! for the diggers.

The Argus persisting in "our own conceit," and misrepresenting, perverting, and slandering the cause of the diggers, ran foul, and went fast to leeward. Experience having instructed me at my own costs, that there cannot possibly exist much sympathy between flunkies and blue-shirts, I can only guess at the compound materials hammered in the mortar of The Argus reporter on Ballaarat: 1st. The land is the Queen's, and the inheritance of the Crown.

2nd. Who dares to teach the golden-lace the idea how to shoot?

3rd. Let learning, commerce, even manners die, But leave us our old nobility.

4th. Sotto voce:—In this colony, however, make money; honestly if possible, of course, but make money; or else the "vagabonds" here would humble down a gentleman to curry-powder diet.

5th. To put on a blue shirt, and rush in with the Eureka mob! fudge: "odi profanum vulgus et arceo." There are millions of tons of gold dug out already, as much anyhow, as anyone can carry to Old England, and live as a lord, with an occasional trip to Paris and Naples, to make up for the time wasted in this colony.

Sum total.—Screw out of the diggers as much as circumstances will admit; they have plenty of money for getting drunk, and making beasts of themselves, the brutes!

To be serious; should a copy of this book be forgotten somewhere, and thereby be spared for the use of some southern Tacitus, let him bewail the perfidious mendacity of our times, whose characteristic is slander, which proceeds from devil Grog; and the pair generate the prosperity of the wicked. Here is a sample:—

On Saturday, September 29th, 1855, the members of the Local Court, Ballaarat, held a public meeting on the usual spot, Bakery-hill, for the purpose of taking the sense of their fellow miners, respecting the admittance or nonadmittance of the legal profession to advise or plead in said court.—See report in The Star, a new local paper, No. V, Tuesday, October 2nd.

Messrs. Ryce and Wall having addressed the meeting in their usual honest, matter-of-fact way:—

"Great works" was shouted and immediately appeared C. Raffaello, member of the Local Court. He hoped, that if there were any Goodenough present that they would see and hot mislay their notes while he briefly brought three things before the meeting; the first concerned the meeting and himself, the second concerned himself, and the third concerned those present. The first was easily disposed of—have I, as I promised, done my duty as member of the Local Court to your satisfaction? (Yes, and cheers.) Very well, the second matter concerns myself—personally he was under no obligations to the lawyers-the services he