Ballarat Reform League

As with the Bendigo protests the previous year (the Red Ribbon Rebellion), the primary objective of the League was to oppose the Miner's Licence.

[4] The actions of the League were reported in sensational and inflammatory terms by Henry Seekamp, editor and owner of the local newspaper, the Ballarat Times, Buningyog and Creswick Advertiser.

As shown on the web site of the Museum of Australian Democracy, Milestones in Australian Democracy[7] these precursors included the following: Additional inspiration for the League came from nationwide debate about Electoral reform: the new Victorian Legislative Council that first met on 11 July 1851, would eventually (in 1856) include in the Victorian Constitution[9] the introduction of the secret ballot, as pioneered in Victoria by the former mayor of Melbourne, William Nicholson[10] and simultaneously in South Australia by William Boothby.

Wright, reporting in the Canberra Times in 1953, for the centenerary of the rebellion, describes the main characters in the story: George Black, a well-educated Englishman was editor of the "Digger's Advocate."

The most picturesque personality among the leaders was an Italian, Raffaello Carboni, and it is to his dynamic and emotional narrative that we owe much of the detail of those bitter days.

(Canberra Times, 29 November 1953, p. 4)[14]On the other hand, Hocking[15] lists the leaders of the League as: Henry Holyoake, a London chartist George Black, a well-educated Englishman who published the Diggers Advocate The more moderate Welshman J B Humffray The German Frederick Vern who promoted ‘red republicanism' Tom Kennedy, the Scottish chartist, was in favour of direct and physical action (Hocking p. 170) The manifesto of the Ballarat Reform League can be seen in its original manuscript form, and in transcription, at the Public Records Office of Victoria (PROV) in Melbourne, from where it is also available online.

It is often unclear because: Despite these flaws, the Charter has enjoyed a glowing reputation ever since Seekamp's claim in the Ballarat Times of 18 November 1854, that the League was "nothing more or less than the germ of Australian independence" that would "change the dynasty of this country".

[8] In summary the Charter consists of three sections with the following components: Contemporary historians such as O'Lincoln[18] and Headon and Uhr[19] caution against the romanticism and the cult status that have frequently been attached to Eureka and its leaders.

According to Hocking,[20] it was not idealism but the exhaustion of Eureka's alluvial gold, amenable to their methods of deep mining, that drove the miners to desperate measures.

Reinforcing the point that the Ballarat Reform League was important but not seminal, Blainey adds[24] The incentives and fears promoting democracy in Australia were already high before the Eureka Stockade quickened the movement towards popular control of Victoria’s new parliament.