Bendigo, the White Hills, September 27th, 1853.

So the diggers have triumphed, and the Government has recorded against itself a fresh act of folly and imbecility in its struggle with them. Perhaps in all the histories of Governments, whether imperial or colonial, there is nothing more humiliating than this last affair.

The meeting which I attended did not, as I stated, seem to make any great impression. I myself came away more conscious of the ludicrous features, than calculating on the importance of its results. But the newspapers arriving with a detailed report of the interview of the delegates with the Governor, at once roused the indignation of the whole body of diggers everywhere. There were in that report no Red Republicans calling on Englishmen, who were merely seeking redress of grievances by constitutional means, “to follow them to blood and victory.” There was no Mr. Dexter in the foreground, lauding these fiery foreigners, and defaming his own country. There was merely a simple but strong picture of a set of gentlemen, calmly, but firmly, putting before the Governor a statement of the outrages and insults suffered by the gold-digging public from his ill-selected authorities, and the sober reasons why the license-fee should be moderated; and in strange and startling opposition, stood in the same picture the Governor, telling these gentlemen, in the most blunt and uncourteous manner, that he did not believe them.