e
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 t