Read We Are the Rebels for Free Online Page A

be
startled by the shadowy phantom of Mrs or Miss A B C, next door, in her night-dress.
    Boundaries were uncertain, like the flicker of candlelight. One female sojourner
wrote that Australian conventions were quite an elastic, compressible thing, and
give to the touch. William Westgarth reflected that such flexibility could catch
a fellow off-guard. Ambition , he observed, writing about the gold-rush population, may rear its head from any social grade, unchecked by conventional barriers . It was
a ‘downside up community’. And that made everyone anxious—particularly the authorities.
    BRITISH JUSTICE
    Justice is based on notions of fairness, equity, objectivity and rationality. We
think of it as a strong, simple—even self-evident—concept. But it draws on many
perspectives, including morality, philosophy, law, religion and culture.
    Justice is often symbolised as a woman: Lady Justice or Justitia, a goddess holding
a sword, which represents the power of the court, and scales to weigh up competing
claims. She wears a blindfold to indicate that justice should be blind to influence,
or in other words impartial. However the British Empire’s take on justice was often
expressed in masculine terms: a gentlemanly notion of the basis of civilised conduct.
The rules of engagement for white men.
    In the mid-nineteenth century, this idea of British justice was a potent force in
civic life, shaping codes of behaviour, influencing what was expected both of individuals
and of the government. In return for their loyalty to the Crown, British subjects
could anticipate justice according to the rule of law, dispensed by an independent
judiciary, as well as protection from administrative corruption and abuse, and the
right to petition authority about their grievances.
    The antithesis of British Justice is Lynch Law, as sometimes practised in America.
Lynch Law is an unregulated form of ‘justice’ (often meaning retribution) inflicted
by an informal group or mob with no legal authority. Punishment by Lynch Law is often
fatal.
    Well, perhaps not everyone.
    George Francis Train’s wife, Willie Davis Train, wrote to her father: The extraordinary
change which has been effected in Melbourne within the past year , can scarcely be
credited by those who have not like myself witnessed the wonderful revolution . For
Willie, the rush of change was like medicine, easing her grief at losing her only
child just weeks before leaving America. As I advance in years and experience , she
wrote to her brother on the same day, I find myself undergoing such a wonderful revolution
that at times I marvel at my own thoughts . An inner riot: a ‘wonderful revolution’
of spirit and circumstance.
    But Willie was one of the lucky ones. The majority of newcomers, even other ladies
of breeding and education, encountered an avalanche of adversity. It could be a struggle
just to keep a toehold.
    For every miner or merchant in the money, there was another down on his luck. And
that very often meant a starving wife and children or a shelved fiancée or fretful
mother at home, waiting for news of a distant son’s good fortune.
    Janet Kincaid was one of the wives left behind—in Glasgow, with six children and
a steady output of unanswered letters. By the time she at last got her husband’s
latest address, she was heartily fed up.
    You left to better your family, you don’t need to write that any more, we have had
enough of that talk. You had better do something for them . You left the ship to better
your self and to get your money to your self . You never earned much for your family,
far less for your Wife , you sent five Pounds, two years and a half ago. You mention in a letter to me that you made more money at the digging than ever you made at
home. You might have sent us the half of what you made. You are a hard hearted Father when you could sit down and eat up your children’s meat your self . I was a poor unfortunate Wretch , little did I think when I was