animosity is proportioned to the closeness of their contiguity and the occasions of their collision. In the case of Jamaica, the feeling of race was intensified by the feeling of colour, by the traditions of different religions, or by different conceptions of the same religion, and by the recollections of slavery. The disparity of numbers, too, stamped a signal characteristic upon relations otherwise sufficiently unfriendly. In the colonies where men of dusky complexions are governed by white men, there is a defined limitation to the increase of the latter, while the former are indefinitely multiplying. This stimulates the hopes of the majority, while it excites the fears of the minority. The small garrison becomes an object of dislike, suspicion, and hatred to its outnumbering neighbours; while they, on their side, are a daily increasing terror to their nominal superiors. In this state of things any accident-as, for instance, a vestry squabble-suffices to bring about a collision. But when it is brought about, the fierceness of the aggression and the fierceness of the retaliation are in a direct ratio to the length of time during which the angry hatred has smouldered for want of opportunity to burst out. Then it is that acts are perpetrated which reveal the unextinguished savageness of the human heart, beneath the superficial gloss of a partial civilization. Then it is that-unless repression comes sternly at once-the pent-up wrath and hate of years find vent in the wildest excesses of murder, rapine, and lust. Then it is that the black man becomes almost a demon in the cruelty of attack, and the white man rivals his foe in the cruelty of his resistance. Whoever is aware of the deeds that have been done on former occasions, and knows their tendency to repeat themselves on every occurrence of insurrection, will naturally feel the utmost anxiety to see any insurrection effectually repressed, and, if he is in office, will exert himself vigorously in its repression.

We do not take upon ourselves to do that which the Commissioners have very properly abstained from doing, viz., to define with precision what was the exact measure of punishment due to the magnitude of the outbreak, and adequate to the prevention of its recurrence. We do not know that it is competent for any person to say with minute accuracy how many men ought to have been put to death. It appears too that Mr. Eyre and the military authorities were justified in thinking that the sudden dispersion of the negro rioters, and their utter inability to make a stand before the troops, were not of themselves sufficient reasons for putting an end at once to all severe measures of repression, so long as the negroes did not submit. In our opinion, they were justified by a knowledge of the negro character. The

negro

negro is a creature of considerable shrewdness on subjects that fall within the scope of his daily ken and observation. He will learn the tastes and predilections of those upon whom his wellbeing is dependent, and he will study to gratify or disgust them, according to his whim. But he has very indistinct notions of all things with which he has not personal acquaintance; and his deductions from the unknown to the known are singularly childish. The evidence presented by this Report contains abundant instances of his unreasoning credulity and fatuous conceit. He could not believe that the Commissioners were not sent out for the express purpose of giving him compensation and punishing Mr. Eyre. In the same way he believed that, if he rose in insurrection, the soldiers would either not be sent against him, or, if sent, would side with him. He had believed also that the "back lands," or waste appurtenances of the old estates, had been given by the Queen to the negroes, who were kept out of them by the grasping and unprincipled whites; that money had been sent out by the Queen, and kept back by the same whites; and that if he rose in rebellion he would get these back lands, and other lands, with the houses, wives, and daughters of their proprietors. Now, if the negro believed these things on no authority, save an idle word first, perhaps, jestingly spoken, it was quite likely that he would believe the rumour which would certainly have been circulated, and which he would have an interest in believing, that the soldiers had never met the insurgents, never taken, or never shot any. The far more intelligent people of India could not for a long time be brought to believe in the arrival of reinforcements from England, or the victories they had gained. That the negro's credulity or incredulity is the offspring of his bias and wishes, there is abundance of evidence in the papers before us to prove. We take one sample. After Sir Henry Storks's arrival in the colony, he found it necessary to issue a proclamation forbidding the use of threatening language towards persons who were about to give their testimony before the Royal Commissioners. A clergyman read this to his country congregation in church, after the termination of the morning prayers. This created quite a disturbance; and as he was passing through the churchyard after service, one negro cried out that the parson was humbugging them,' and that he did not believe either the parson or the Government proclamation. In the same way the duped people would have stuck to their belief that the Queen was on their side, unless they had seen the Queen's soldiers acting vigorously against them. Mr. Eyre's vigorous measures confined the seditious outbreak to the Eastern and South-Eastern portions of

the

the island. But the intentions of the insurgents were not confined to those portions-they embraced the whole Colony. As will be seen, scattered amongst the voluminous evidence of the Commission, the Bogles and their followers spoke of driving the whites, not out of St. Thomas's in the East, but out of Jamaica. And we know that persons of position, both lay and clerical, received warning to be on their guard about the time at which the outbreak began. Mr. Harrison, for instance, was emphatically warned, so far back as July, to leave Jamaica, and not return till after Christmas. In Vere, Metcalfe, and St. Ann's, seditious threats were used before the outbreak in St. Thomas's in the East. Proprietors were coolly told that if they did not choose to rent their lands out, they would be deprived of them by force; that the people would soon be free, and the lands divided among them;' that all the coloured and white men's days would soon be over; they should not rule the country any longer.' No one after reading the Blue Books can doubt the diffusion of the bad feeling among the blacks of different districts. Had, then, the soldiers contented themselves with a military promenade to Bath, or along the Blue Mountain Valley, it is clear to us what must have been the impression made on the negro mind. It would have been that the negro soldiers were friendly, or the white officers timid, or the local Government incapable. Things would have remained quiet, so long as the soldiers were in the district; and, as soon as they had been removed, fresh plans for a rising would have been concerted, fresh aggressions on authority undertaken, fresh murders and rapine committed. And a second rising, after the lenient treatment of the first, would have been more audacious in its designs, stronger in its numbers, more complete in its organization, and more expansive in its extent, than the first had been. The design avowed by some of the negroes would have been executed, of breaking down the bridges and cutting off all communication with the camp and all chance of rescue for the besieged and isolated whites. This would have happened in the mountain districts, where the rebels were unapproachable by troops. But, if the rising had been deferred till the military force in the colony was considerably reduced, the rioters might have wrought fearful havoc in Kingston and Spanish Town before any body of troops could be collected to meet them, and then they might have retired to the mountains, whence it would have taken years, perhaps, to dislodge them.

When we recollect that, in the interval between the years 1732 and 1834, there were five or six formidable risings of negroes ; that on some of these occasions plantations were fired and proprietors killed by the score; that one portion of the negroes (the

Maroons)

Maroons) were once strong enough to extort both a distinct settlement and a treaty; that other islands, especially Antigua and Barbadoes-and recently again Antigua and St. Vincents-had witnessed conspiracies of the negroes to get possession of them and exterminate the whites; that in Jamaica the negroes had been increasing in numbers, while the white population had decreased; that the example of Hayti's independence was a subject of common talk and reference, while the boasting braggadocio of Haytian sojourners was familiar to certain influential negroes; that the laxest form of dissenting discipline had been found too tight for the negro Baptists, who had substituted for it a discipline and teachers of their own, both singularly tolerant of political insubordination; when we recollect these facts, we cannot wonder that the first indications of a seditious organization among the negroes were sufficient to inspire the local Government with the most ardent resolution to prevent by all means the possibility of a second outbreak after the first had been put down. It was absolutely necessary that the rebels should be impressed with a conviction not only of the strength of the Government, but of the terrible dangers that they would incur by resisting it. The details of the evidence show that in this, as in every other similar contest, 'waiters upon Providence' abounded-m -men who waited to see which side would be successful; who were not disaffected themselves, and had no cause of disaffection, but who could not have withstood the violent current of sedition, if it had been allowed to run its course and been arrested by no signal force. The evidence in the Blue Books is clear on this point. Well-affected and kindly-disposed negroes, when asked what side they would take in the event of a general rising, replied in these terms: 'I could not fight against my own colour; under such circumstances we would all be obliged to submit;' and 'If any of the negroes wished to help you, they dare not do it ;' and 'They would go with the strongest side.' On negroes of this kind one or two executions would have made no impression. They could have been known only to a few persons in the districts in which they took place. In other even contiguous districts they would have been discredited. Men would have been found to deny that they had ever been carried into effect, and to assert that the report of them was only a 'buckra's lie.' Indeed, we have a remarkable instance of this incredulity in a letter written by one Roman Catholic priest to another, after the affair at Morant's Bay, and published in one of the earliest Blue Books, wherein this paragraph occurs:—

It is quite remarkable how common is the idea amongst the poor blacks that the accounts in the papers of the affair at St. Thomas in

the

the East are written merely to frighten them. They evidently believe that the white men have been successfully attacked and opposed, and are now frightened throughout the island. . . . At the Moneaque the police told me the people are fully persuaded that the rebels have not been punished; and that the reports are merely to frighten them.'

ex

And so it would have been if measures of only partial severity had been adopted. But, as yet, with such evidence as we have before us, and removed as we are far away from the scene of awful strife, we see no reason for discrediting the judgment of the Royal Commissioners that the number of 450 was cessive.' It is much to be deplored that a single drop of blood should have been shed without necessity. At the same time we do say that, considering what was the object proposed by any punishment, the safety of the white population and the loyal negroes would not have been secured by meteing out death to forty or fifty rebels as retribution for the deaths of the fifty volunteers and justices slain and wounded at and after the affair of Morant Bay. Yet this is the suggestion which has been made by philanthropic critics reading the Reports from Jamaica in the rooms of London clubs, or by professional spouters on religious platforms.

We wish to do justice to all the parties implicated in this unhappy business-to the Governor, to the military, to the negro. We know generally what a terrible state of things prevailed in Jamaica; but we do not realise all the features of the crisis. We may, therefore, make insufficient allowance not only for the actual exigencies of the case, but for the impressions of it made upon the minds of those who were suddenly called on to act under their influence. But we hold that it is the duty of an English Governor to rise superior to the passions and prejudices of those by whom he is surrounded, especially when these passions tend to acts of cruel retaliation; and to discourage and reprove all threats and expressions of wild vengeance. We think that Mr. Eyre has not completely cleared himself in respect of the duration of martial law, which was the real cause of the executions mounting up so high; nor in respect of his silent acquiescence in the reckless levity with which Colonel Hobbs and other officers spoke of their dealings with the negro. There is a third point which regards the execution of Gordon: of this we shall speak later.

With regard to the first point, there are two lines of defence, quite different in character. One of these Mr. Eyre takes; the other may be gathered incidentally from the proceedings before the Royal Commissioners. Mr. Eyre had proclaimed an amnesty at the end of October, a fortnight after the proclamation of martial law; but this did not affect the continuance of martial

law,