ABSTRACT
By this time, the scarcity of gold for individual pros pectors had drawn their attention to what they perceived as a division between, on the one hand, the equality and mateship on the goldfields, and on the other the political and social privileges they were denied in the world around them. This was best illustrated, they argued, in the enforced administra tion of the licences required by miners to work the diggings. Police enforced the licence fee, which many described as too costly considering the unpredictable nature of their work. Miners also complained of the difficulty in obtaining the licences, which often required them to walk miles and wait for hours before being interviewed. Raffaello Carboni, one of the diggers' leaders, commented in 1855, "I think the practical miner, who had been hard at work, night and day, for the last four or six months,. . . objected to the tax itself, because he could not possibly afford to pay it. And was it not atrocious to confine this man in the lousy lock-up at the Camp, because he had no luck?"
