the substitution therefor of a "miners'
right" or Crown permission, lasting for a year, and granted for a
nominal fee of one pound, to occupy for mining purposes a specific piece
of Crown land. The deficiency in revenue anticipated from the abolition
of license fees was to be met by the imposition of an export duty upon
gold at the rate of a half-crown an ounce.

The commission strongly recommended the granting of the political
franchise to holders of "miners' rights," and the provision of liberal
facilities for the acquisition of land by the miners. It also advocated
the simplification of the existing complex system of government in the
mining districts, whereby commissioners, police authorities,
commissariat officials, and magistrates all worked independently of each
other, and suggested the substitution therefor of experienced "wardens"
at the head of elective boards, who should not only dispose, with the
aid of skilled assessors, of disputes specially connected with mining
operations, but who should have power to issue by-laws adapted to the
special requirements of each district.

These recommendations were for the most part carried out by legislation
of the same year (1855), and, before his lamented death in December,
1855, Sir Charles Hotham had the happiness being able to report to the
Home Government the almost perfect tranquillity of the gold-fields.
Moreover, the revenue had not suffered by the substitution of the export
duty for the license fees; but the collector of customs was of opinion
that the result of the change had been to throw the entire burden of the
tax upon the importers of the colony instead of upon the mining
population. The Government was not, however, disposed to concern itself
with considerations of abstract justice so long as it could collect a
sufficient revenue without serious opposition.

(1854) THE RISE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, Abraham Lincoln

The election of 1852 virtually destroyed the Whig party, and Franklin
Pierce, the candidate of the Democratic party, was elected by great
majorities. If the Whig party had perished because it had no distinct
position upon the one overshadowing question of the day, so neither did
the new President comprehend the nature and condition of that issue. In
his first message he complacently congratulated the country that the
slavery question had been settled peacefully and forever by the
compromise measures of 1850. He little knew how ineffect