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| ‘On Tuesday last, the servant of the Rev. Smith went to a neighbouring
tent to visit a sick man; while inside, a savage trooper, foaming at the
mouth like a mad dog, come galloping up to the tent door and shouts out,
as we have been informed, 'come out here you d____d wretches, there’s a
good many like you on the diggings.' At this summons, the man with the
other inmates came outside and stood before the savage and cowardly
trooper: the latter asks the servant if 'he’s got a license?' The servant,
who is a native of Armenia, answers, in imperfect English, that he is a
servant to the priest: the trooper says 'damn you and the priest'... The
servant... is a disabled man, unable to walk over the diggings, but [says
he] would go directly to the Camp if the trooper would take him there.
This infuriates the monster; he strikes and knocks down the poor, disabled
foreigner, drags him about, tears his shirt... Commissioner Johnson rides
up. What does he do? Does he order the trooper under arrest! No, he
commends him, and says to the crowd about him that he should not be
interrupted in the discharge of his 'dooty!'’ Ballarat times, 11 October 1854. |
ImageDescription From: Laughing a crime, or twenty pounds no comedy: a poem on the malpractices of the government and its emissaries on the gold-fields of Ballarat. Melbourne, B.A. Hunter, 1853, p.14. |
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