Les Blake

Diggers resented being treated as mere rent-producers without representation...Diggers could not modify laws in their favour; they could not unlock lands which would enable them to have freeholders’ voting rights...From a population of 83,627 in 1851, the colony increased its numbers to 148,627 by December next year. A man paid more in one year to fossick in his tiny claim for gold than a squatter paid to lease vast tracts of the country for his sheep and cattle...And who imposed the licence fee? The squatter-dominated Legislative Council, the only official form of government that the new colony had... Black told Hotham that, if a land sale was held, the best allotments were so big that few diggers could afford to buy them; they had to be satisfied with ‘smaller slices’ of the poorer land while squatters kept great tracts of land locked up simply by paying a ludicrously low annual licence. Peter Lalor The Man From Eureka