From Rural Wales To Australia
At the meeting of over 10,000 diggers at Bakery Hill on Saturday, 11 November 1854, Humffray was elected secretary of the Ballarat Reform League. He was a member of the three person delegation which met with Governor Hotham in Melbourne on Monday, 27 November 1854. The miners' demands for economic and political reforms were rejected. After a particularly vicious licence hunt, a meeting of the Ballarat Reform League was held on Thursday, 30 November 1854 in which the miners rejected those such as Humffray who advocated "moral force" and embarked on the "physical force" route by electing Peter Lalor and deciding to meet force with force and build the Eureka Stockade.
Humffray was not part of the rebellion but played the role of peacemaker in the lead up to the battle on 3 December 1854. He represented the interests of aggrieved diggers at the Commission of Enquiry into the discontent on the goldfields. Humffray was a vocal defender of the 13 miners who were charged with High Treason for their role in the rebellion. He was the editor of the short-lived Ballarat Leader, first president of the Ballarat Mechanics' Institute; and passed first-year law, University of Melbourne (1860). Humffray was an Anglican and died a pauper on 18 March 1891.
Read more about this topic: John Basson Humffray
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