PETER LALOR
- Australian Legend -
G'day folks,
Welcome to a man who inspired Australia's first revolution. Peter Fintan Lalor was an Irish-Australian rebel and, later,
politician who rose to fame for his leading role in the Eureka Stockade,
an event controversially identified with the "birth of democracy" in
Australia.
Peter Lalor
(1827-1889), Eureka stockade leader and politician, was born on 5 February 1827
in the parish of Raheen, Queen's County, Ireland, son of Patrick Lalor
(pronounced Lawler) and his wife Ann, née Dillon. The family was descended from
the O'Lalours, one of the Seven Septs of Leix who had fought against the
English invasion of Ireland in the sixteenth century. The Lalors had leased the
700 acres (283 ha) of Tenakill since 1767 and remained fairly prosperous until
the great famine of 1845. They were supporters of Ireland's freedom from
British rule and of the rights of the Irish peasantry. In 1831 Patrick Lalor had
led the resistance of the Leix peasants against the forcible collection of
tithes for the established church and in 1832-35 represented Queen's County in
the House of Commons where he was an ardent advocate for the repeal of the Act
of Union. In 1853 he wrote: 'I have been for upwards of forty years struggling
without ceasing in the cause of the people'.
The eldest of
Patrick's eleven sons, James Fintan, became a leader of the Irish Confederation
and the 'Young Ireland' movement of 1848. According to (Sir) Charles Gavan Duffy, he was 'the most original and intense
… of all the men who have preached revolutionary politics in Ireland'. In the Nation
he expounded his belief in 'Ireland her own, from the sod to the sky'. He
became co-editor of the Irish Felon in 1848 but was in Newgate prison
during the uprising. On his release, he plunged into a new unsuccessful
revolutionary conspiracy. He died in December 1849. Fintan had urged his
brother Richard in 1848 to form Confederate clubs and engage a blacksmith to
make pikes for the peasants. Fintan's letters record only the suggestion that
Peter should join the Felon club and that Richard should bring him to
Dublin to take part in the rising.
Peter's early
years were overshadowed by these dramatic events and by the famine but no
evidence shows that he was actively involved. Later he commented that 'from
what he had seen of the mode of conducting politics in [Ireland] he had … no
inclination to mix himself up with them'. Educated at Carlow College and in
Dublin, he became a civil engineer. The years after the famine saw a great
emigration from Ireland. Three of the Lalor brothers went to America while Peter
and Richard migrated to Victoria attracted by the gold discoveries. They
arrived at Melbourne in October 1852 and Peter found work on the construction
of the Melbourne-Geelong railway; he and Richard also became partners with
another Irishman as wine, spirits and provision merchants in Melbourne. In 1853
Peter left for the Ovens diggings. Early in 1854 he moved to Ballarat. Richard
did not accompany him to the diggings and soon returned to Ireland where he
became a member of parliament for Leix in 1880-92 and was an ardent Home Ruler
and supporter of Parnell.
Peter apparently saw himself as much merchant as
digger, since he bought from the partnership over £800 worth of tobacco,
spirits and other supplies; however, his departure for the goldfields ended his
career as a city merchant.
At Ballarat
Lalor staked a claim on the Eureka lead, where many Irish diggers were
concentrated, although his own 'mate' was Duncan Gillies, a
Scot. He was reported to be among the shrinking minority of Ballarat diggers
who were having 'fair luck' on their claims; he was involved, although not
prominently, in the agitations over the miners' licence and 'digger-hunting'.
Later Lalor wrote, perhaps thinking of the wrongs of Ireland, 'the people were
dissatisfied with the laws, because they excluded them from the possession of
the land, from being represented in the Legislative Council, and imposed on
them an odious poll-tax' (licence fee) which an arbitrary officialdom sought to
collect from diggers.
The Ballarat
Reform League arose from the agitation against the imprisonment of three
diggers charged with the burning of Bentley's Hotel. The league's programme
reflected the radical beliefs of its leaders: it was overtly Chartist in its
demands and, some said, covertly republican. Lalor was a member of the
committee, although he must have had reservations about parts of its programme.
On 29 November 1854 the league called its first mass meeting to hear the report
of its deputation to the governor. Sir Charles Hotham had promised an inquiry into the diggers'
grievances but refused to accede to the diggers' 'demand' for the release of
their mates. The mood of the 12,000 diggers who gathered on Bakery Hill for the
first time under their Southern Cross flag was for physical resistance.
Resolutions were carried calling on the diggers to burn their licences and
pledging the protection of the 'united people' for any digger arrested for
non-possession of a licence.
Lalor's first public appearance was at this
meeting: he moved for a further league meeting on 3 December in order to elect
a central committee.
On 30 November
the troops had undertaken a 'digger hunt' on Bakery Hill. The news of the
resulting clash spread rapidly through the diggings to the Eureka, where Lalor
was working in his shaft, 140 ft (43 m) below ground, with Timothy Hayes,
chairman of the league, at the windlass above. Diggers rushed to the scene and,
as the troops withdrew with their prisoners, occupied the hill where the flag
was again raised. The diggers dispersed to gather strength and resolved to
reassemble at 4 p.m. None of the regular spokesmen was then present and Lalor
'mounted the stump and proclaimed “Liberty”.' He called on the men to arm
themselves and to organize for self-defence. Some hundreds were enrolled and
Lalor, according to Raffaello Carboni,
'knelt down, the head uncovered, and with the right hand pointing to the
standard, exclaimed in a firm measured tone: “We swear by the Southern Cross to
stand truly by each other to defend our rights and liberties”. A universal
well-rounded Amen, was the determined reply'. That night Lalor wrote to his
fiancée, Alicia Dunne, a school-teacher in Geelong: 'the diggers … in
self-defence, have taken up arms and are resolved to use them … I am one
amongst them. You must not be unhappy on this account. I would be unworthy of
being called a man, I would be unworthy of myself, and, above all, I would be
unworthy of you and of your love, were I base enough to desert my companions in
danger'.
Next morning
some 1500 diggers assembled on Bakery Hill and marched behind their flag to the
Eureka. The leaders met and appointed Lalor commander. In response he said: 'I
expected someone who is really well known to come forward and direct our
movement. However, if you appoint me your commander-in-chief, I shall not
shrink. I tell you, gentlemen, if once I pledge my hand to the diggers, I will
neither defile it with treachery, nor render it contemptible with cowardice'.
In the next
two days both sides continued their preparations. The diggers threw up a
barricade of which Lalor wrote, 'it was nothing more than an enclosure to keep
our own men together, and was never erected with an eye to military defence';
yet it closely resembled the fortified circular encampments planned by Fintan
Lalor in 1848. Behind it, the men drilled and blacksmiths manufactured pikes.
Lalor claimed no military expertise; he appointed a young American to look
after the military side while he organized picketing and the procurement of
arms, ammunition and other supplies. The government camp organized for action
and infiltrated the stockade with spies.
Lalor did not
expect an immediate attack and did not plan to confine defence to the stockade.
By midnight on Saturday only about 120 men were left in the stockade, most of
them Irish. Some hundreds had left to spend the night in their tents. At about
3 a.m., Sunday, 3 December, the troops and police attacked. They quickly
stormed the flimsy stockade and its defences, killing thirty or more diggers
and taking over a hundred prisoners. True to his pledge Lalor had stood his
ground but was hit in the left arm and collapsed. He was hidden under logs and
escaped the bayonets of the attackers. He was smuggled from the battlefield and
eventually reached the home of Father Smyth, where his arm was amputated at the
shoulder by a party of doctors. Legend has Lalor recovering consciousness
during the operation and, seeing one doctor with signs of faintness, saying
'Courage! Courage! Take it off!'
Hotham offered
a reward of £200 for information leading to the apprehension of a 'person of
the name of Lawlor … height 5 ft 11 ins [180 cm], age 35, hair dark brown,
whiskers dark brown and shaved under the chin, no moustache, long face, rather
good looking and … a well made man' who at Ballarat 'did … use certain TREASONABLE AND SEDITIOUS LANGUAGE, and incite Men to take up Arms, with a view to
make war against Our Sovereign Lady the QUEEN'.
There were no takers: public sympathy was overwhelmingly with the diggers.
Lalor remained concealed in Ballarat for several weeks; from there he was taken
by dray to Geelong, where he was cared for by Alicia Dunne and married her on
10 July 1855 at St Mary's Church.
Public
subscriptions for the disabled Lalor raised enough money for him to buy '160
acres [65 ha] of very good land within 10 miles [16 km] of Ballaarat'; he
emerged from hiding to bid for the land and was not arrested. In March the
reward had been revoked, and in April the thirteen diggers charged with treason
were acquitted. The colonists generally shared Lalor's judgment of the
stockade: 'neither anarchy, bloodshed, nor plunder, were the objects of those
engaged … Stern necessity alone forced us to do it'. One eye-witness reports Lalor
as saying that his object as leader was 'independence'; if this were so, it
would seem that the independence he wanted was from arbitrary rule, from
encroachments by the Crown on 'British Liberty', and that granted by access to
the land, rather than the 'independence' of a republican democracy.
With the
adoption of the recommendation of the commissioners appointed by Hotham to
inquire into the condition of the goldfields that the Legislative Council be
enlarged to include elected representatives of the goldfields, Lalor was one of
two diggers' leaders returned unopposed in November 1855 to represent Ballarat.
He told his electors: 'I am in favour of such a system of law reform as will
enable the poor man to obtain equal justice with the rich'. When the first
parliament was elected under the new Constitution in 1856 Lalor was returned
unopposed to the Legislative Assembly for North Grenville, a Ballarat seat. He
was appointed an inspector of railways at a salary of £600, but was soon
debarred from this post when legislation was passed prohibiting civil servants
from sitting in parliament.
In the
assembly Lalor spoke out for the interests of the diggers: he successfully
advocated compensation for the victims of Eureka, and unsuccessfully the right
of miners to enter private property in search of gold; in vain he opposed the
appropriation of funds for a memorial to Hotham, saying, 'There was sufficient
monument already existing in the graves of the thirty individuals slain at
Ballarat'. Yet he aroused hostility among his digger constituents by supporting
plural voting on a property franchise and a six-months' residency qualification
for the franchise, and land legislation which radicals held to favour the
squatters. In defence he said that he would never consent to deprive a
freeholder of his right to vote in virtue of his freehold, and that the danger
inherent in conferring the franchise on 'an unsettled population' should be
balanced 'by infusing into the people a conservative element by attaching them
to the land'. He denied that he was a democrat if that meant 'Chartism,
Communism, or Republicanism', but asserted that 'if democracy means opposition
to a tyrannical press, a tyrannical people or a tyrannical government, then I
have ever been, I am still, and will ever remain, a democrat'. The diggers were
not convinced, and Lalor wisely stood for South Grant in 1859. He was elected
and became chairman of committees at a salary of £800.
Lalor's stance
in parliament appeared puzzlingly inconsistent. He was an early advocate of
protection of local industry, believing that it would provide work for men no
longer able to make a living on the goldfields, but he also supported assisted
immigration. Although a devout Roman Catholic, he opposed state aid to religion
and supported a national education system provided that provision was made for
religious teaching. He supported the 1860 and 1862 Land Acts providing for
selection from the squatters' runs, but urged sale by auction of both freehold
agricultural land and grazing leases, declaring that the creation of 'a middle
class of landed proprietors' able to employ labourers at reasonable wages, was
preferable to opening the land in small lots to men without capital. He
supported reform of the Legislative Council but opposed payment to members.
When the McCulloch government came into conflict with the council
over the protectionist tariff and later the 'Darling grant', Lalor urged
caution and abstained from voting on several of the government's vital
measures, holding them to be unconstitutional.
Lalor's
pursuit of his own judgment won him no friends in parliament, yet as a good
local member with a strong personal following he topped the poll for South
Grant in 1868. The ministry repaid his 'unsoundness' by refusing to reappoint
him as chairman of committees. In the next three years Lalor virtually
abandoned parliament for private business, attending only 31 of 174 divisions.
He operated as a land and mining agent and was director of several mining
companies, the most important being the New North Clunes. He was also chairman
at a substantial salary of the Clunes Water Commission. On his initiative
legislation was passed enabling the commission to borrow money for the
construction of a water supply system for Clunes. The money was raised by the
New North Clunes Mining Co. In 1873 the government bought the commission for
£65,000, thus enabling New North Clunes to declare what the Ballarat Star
described as the largest dividend ever paid by a mining company—£30 a share. It
was also alleged that Lalor employed blacklegs to enforce a wage cut in one of
his mines. Lalor was narrowly squeezed out of third place in the 1871 election
by Jonas Levien whom he angrily described as 'a little jew
boy' and against whom he pursued a vendetta.
The 1874
election was fought on the reform of the Legislative Council. Lalor was by now
convinced that domination of the council by squatters made reform necessary,
and that its powers should be limited to those enjoyed by the House of Lords.
He was elected third member for South Grant. When (Sir) Graham Berry formed
his first government in 1875, Lalor became commissioner for customs. The
government was defeated after a few months but Berry was refused a dissolution
by the governor and led his followers in a stonewalling campaign to disrupt the
conduct of business. Lalor supported Berry's tactics wholeheartedly.
In the 1877
election Lalor again backed all Berry's policies, including payment of members.
He won a landslide victory, and Lalor became postmaster-general and as
commissioner for customs negotiated in vain with Sir Henry Parkes to remove the border duties between Victoria
and New South Wales. When the council refused to accept the payment of members,
Berry retaliated by sacking the colony's senior public servants. Melbourne
Punch laid this 'Black Wednesday' at the door of Lalor who had been
outspoken in denouncing the 'arrogant power' of the council. However, Lalor
twice embarrassed the government and asserted his independence by voting
against measures which Berry believed significant.
The Berry
government was defeated in 1880 but Lalor topped the poll for South Grant as a
Berryite. In a later election that year Berry won again and moved for the
appointment of Lalor as Speaker. Although denounced by Thomas Bent as a 'rebel against
the British crown' and as having been 'drunk on the floor of this House', Lalor
was appointed unopposed. 'The first duty of a Speaker', he said, 'is to be a
tyrant. Remove him if you like, but while he is in the chair obey him. The
Speaker is the embodiment of the corporate honour of the House. He is above
party. He is the greatest representative of the people'. Despite conservative
fears that Lalor would lean towards his political friends he maintained the
strength, dignity and impartiality of the chair, and was reappointed by
successive parliaments until diabetes weakened his physique and impaired his
judgment. The death of his only daughter and in May 1887 of his wife greatly
affected him, and he resigned as Speaker in September.
The premier,
Duncan Gillies, introduced a bill to grant Lalor £4000 to free him of financial
worries in his last months. Despite party opposition in the assembly the bill
was passed and later carried unanimously in the council. Earlier Lalor had
refused the offer of a knighthood. In a bid to regain his health he took leave
from parliament, but remained a member at the express wish of his constituents,
and went by sea to San Francisco. On his return he became bedridden in the home
of his only son, Joseph, where he died on 9 February 1889. Besides the requiem
in Melbourne, flags were flown at half-mast and a special memorial service was
held at Ballarat.
On entry into
parliament Lalor had been described by the Argus as 'a bluff, straight
forward gentleman who blurts out plain truths in a homely matter-of-fact
style'. Certainly as diggers' leader and as parliamentarian he fought with
courage, determination and often passion for the truth as he saw it. His
loyalties were to principles rather than to individuals. The inconsistencies of
his political stance can perhaps best be explained by the principles he
consistently upheld: a well-ordered society based on a broad and prosperous
land-holding class, governed by free men in the liberal institutions embodied
in British constitutional procedures. Only when a class claimed exclusive and
overbearing power and sought to impose its will arbitrarily was Lalor's anger aroused
and turned him, however reluctantly, to action. Once committed to a course he
did not waver from it. Neither a profound thinker nor a skilful politician,
Lalor was a good fighter and a man of rectitude who came finally to earn the
respect even of those whom he had most vehemently opposed on grounds of
principle.
Clancy's comment: May he rest in peace.
I'm ...
