Therefore, Hotham was not looking to reform this area within Victoria, even though he considered the miners to be "orderly well conducted people" . The licence system was put in place to regulate the number of miners searching for gold in the fields. The gold licence was a licence that allowed the miners access to a small plot of land for a certain amount of time. It was payable monthly for a high fee of "one pound ten shillings" . This caused the diggers problems because of the high cost and the violence that became involved when licence hunts took place . The police that conducted these "hunts" were known for their brutality and tyrannical behaviour toward the diggers. One of the diggers involved, Fredrick Vern declared the licence fee to be "an imposition and an unjustifiable tax on free labour" . This clearly suggests that diggers viewed the authorities in the negative manner, which also suggests that due to this animosity between the parties involved, a clash was inevitable. .
The second of the diggers problems with the system in place was the lack of land available to them to purchase . This was a problem for the diggers as a number of them wanted to invest " their small capital or their earnings of gold upon a section of ground" . However, there were strict restrictions on the land for sale and this meant that most diggers were not able to buy the land that they wanted. "[T]he inadequacy of the supplies of land as compared with the wants of the population." This statement is taken from a report of a Royal Commission shortly before the Eureka Stockade . It illustrates that the authorities knew of the grievances that affected the goldfields, but it was not until after the rebellion at Eureka that any of these issues were addressed. .
The last issue that the diggers were concerned about was the lack of political rights they held . They had no self-elected body on the goldfields; a commissioner was put in charge of the administration of the goldfields .