No business is so uncertain as surface-mining.
Your claim may be good, and it may be worthless.

It may make you well off in a month; and then again you may have to dig and slave for half a year, at heavy expense, only to find out at last that the gold is not there in cost-paying quantity, and that your time and your hard work have been thrown away.

It might be wise policy to advance the miner a monthly sum to encourage him to develop the country's riches; but to tax him monthly in advance instead--why, such a thing was never dreamed of in America.

There, neither the claim itself nor its products, howsoever rich or poor, were taxed.
The Ballarat miners protested, petitioned, complained--it was of no use; the government held its ground, and went on collecting the tax.

And not by pleasant methods, but by ways which must have been very galling to free people.