GOVERNOR EYBE'S DESPATCH.
IT is but natural that the proceedings in Jamaica should excite violent party feeling in this country, nor do we complain that the criticisms we have passed upon the proceed- ings taken to suppress the rebellion have been somewhat vehe- mently criticized in their turn. We are told on many sides that we have apologized for the mob who fired the Court House at Morant Bay. Is that because we took special care to approve cordially the execution of Paul Bogle and all who were known to be concerned in it ? We are assured that it is "part of the pro- gramme" of our journal to take the side we have taken, and t--- that "justice may strive in vain to change its tone,"—an accusation which, if it means anything, means, we suppose, that it is part of our programme to plead for those who appear to have suffered injustice, for those who have many powerful enemies and few powerful friends, when they need it, —an accusation which we have no desire to deny. But assuredly we care nothing for the negro qua negro. We would say nothing to palliate a negro's guilt in any crime or brutality he has committed. The only offence of which as far as we know we have ever been guilty in this respect, is a humble desire to see black men dealt with exactly as white men of the same moral and mental charac- teristics would be dealt with,—so much, and no more. What we desire to see in Jamaica,—what we are indignant at not seeing,—is the same spirit in dealing with rebellion which would be shown if the rebels were Fenian, instead of negroes. We have a faint impression that if Colonel Hobbs had kept "an intelligent little valet " of Mr. Stephens's close to his saddle bow, with a pistol to his head, and had ordered him, under that compulsion, to point out the various responsible officers of the Fenian organization in a crowd of Irishmen, and had hanged or shot all so pointed out the next day, the Irish members, not to say the English members, of the House of Commons, could have made a good deal of fuss about that summary proceeding. We are inclined to suppose that had the O'Donoghue been seized in London for writing seditious letters and making seditious speeches, tried hastily by court-martial in Dublin, and hanged within forty-eight hours, we should have scarcely heard a panegyric on Lord Wodehouse's promptitude, or had articles in the Times heartily approving the energy and suc- cessful severity of the Lord-Lieutenant. The true suppressed premiss at the bottom of all these indignant protests against our very moderate line of thought, is the assumption that a hundred negroes' lives are of less value than one white life, that even the duty of securing ordinary civil justice to a light mulatto like Mr. Gordon, who takes part with negroes, cannot weigh for a moment in the scale against even a risk of danger to pure Englishmen,—that, in short, proceedings which would be thought utterly savage in Ireland are praise- worthy in Jamaica. That women, without arms or a chance of arms, should be hanged by court-martial for admitting that they had been present at meetings at which oaths of secrecy were enforced, is surely a somewhat startling form of British justice. Not even the panic of imminent universal rebellion would be now held to palliate such a proceeding in Ireland. In Jamaica, however, the laws of justice and mercy are of course widely different.
But, it is said, there was the pressing fear of a universal massacre in Jamaica. to justify this attempt to paralyze the vast numerical majority of the population by striking a sudden terror into them. Was there ? That is the only point on which we were quite uncertain when we wrote last. Had it been so, 'it does not seem to us that it could have justified, though it might partially have palliated, proceedings such as the letting loose of the Maroons on the black popula- tion, the distinguished campaign of Colonel Hobbs, and the court-martialing of Mr. Gordon, a member of the Legisla- tive Assembly, not even accused of any part in the Morant Bay massacre, who had surrendered himself to justice,— but doubtless every one would have felt that it did palliate the injustice and, so far as there was cruelty, the cruelty of such proceedings. A Governor seriously fearing, on good grounds, that the colony might be wrested from his grasp by insurrection, ought not to be very particular in his measures. Officers, instructed to prevent at any cost the massacre of the whole white population, could not be expected not to forestall, even at the cost of some innocent lives, anything like menacing movements of negro troops. But then what is the use of sending out Englishmen unconnected with our colonies to rule them at all, if they cannot keep their heads sue- ficiently above the prevalent excitement to judge what is an emergency justifying extreme measures, and what is not ?
We might as well leave Jamaica to be governed by a leading planter, as send out a brave and enterprising Englishman who
will accept all that the white inhabitants around him say of the necessity of desperate measures on any emergency. The greatness of Lord Canning's administration in India was that he stood like a rock between the natives and the settlers when an enormous native army had mutinied. In this case there was no native army to mutiny. The danger was im- measurably less in every respect, and the power of the Government in relation to that danger immeasurably greater. What does Governor Eyre—who, as we have shown else- where, is not only a brave man, but a man almost unrivalled on the earth for courage, in some sense both moral and physical—say in his despatch to justify the astounding measures, the responsibility of all of which, down to the campaign of Colonel Hobbs and the court-martialing of Mr. Gordon, he deliberately and very honourably assumes ? As far as we can judge, absolutely nothing. Of course he shows enough to justify instant capital punishment for all engaged in the Morant Bay murders. No one that we know of has ever disputed the justice and wisdom of prompt severity with respect to those who had any share in that act. But what does Mr. Eyre show to justify the indiscriminate slaughter of the other so-called rebels ?' Nothing stronger than the actual possession of arms by some of these rebels,— not even the use of them, still less any organized use of them, least of all any efficient use of them. " No stand," writes Mr. Eyre, "has ever been made against the troops, and though we are not only in complete military occupation of, but have traversed with troops, all the disturbed districts, not a single casualty has befallen one of our soldiers or sailors, and they are all in good health." Even Colonel Hobbs, in that great night march, on the exciting nature of which he was so eloquent, had no more formidable adversary than the storm and the rebels whom he captured, and executed on the evidence elicited by a pistol pointed at the head of the "intelligent little valet " of Paul Bogle, were apparently captured quite without resistance. In all the eighty para- graphs in which Governor Eyre narrates his measures for the suppression of the insurrection, there is not one furnishing any evidence at all beyond the Morant Bay riot itself that there was anything to be called a "rebellion." Even that riot had not proceeded to any act of violence till after the volun- teers had fired into the mob, and Governor Eyre, whose account seems perfectly candid, admits that "as far as we could learn, no ladies or children had as yet been injured." Mr. Gordon, who is spoken of by the Governor as " himself the chief cause and origin of the whole rebellion," was the son of a white man and the husband of a white lady, and exceedingly unlikely therefore to have been the instigator of anything like a massacre of whites and mulattoes. Governor Eyre's despatch contains the following, and only the following, traces of any- thing like organization of resistance to the Government :---(l) The Morant Bay riot itself, the leaders of which, Paul Bogle and others, had pretty certainly been organizing some sort of resistance to the authorities for some days back,—the original quarrel being apparently a dispute as to the ownership of an. abandoned plantation called Stony Gut, claimed by the negroes. (2) Subsequent plundering parties in neighbouring parishes— as Governor Eyre thinks independently organized—accom- panied by some fresh murders. (3) The capture of negroes with arms in their hands. (4) The issue by post, attributed to Mr. Gordon, of certain circulars containing " seditious language" and political " misrepresentations." This is all— literally all—Governor Eyre's evidence for the existence of a rebellion which he thinks would either have resulted in the loss of the colony to the mother country, or "an almost in- terminable war and an unknown expense."
Now, what we assert is, that all, and much more than all, . of these dangerous and threatening symptoms have repeatedly occurred in our own manufacturing districts in former times,—the rumoured " atrocities " on the murdered per- sons at Morant Bay,—for none of which Governor Eyre appears to have any evidence, but " it is said"—alone excepted, and when we remember how many of the worst of the rumoured atrocities in India disappeared entirely under close scrutiny, these rumours do not add to the strength of the case. But who would justify letting loose the soldiery to shoot volleys at all suspicious knots of Englishmen in "dis- turbed " districts (even when armed, and Governor Eyre speaks of those caught with arms in their hands as only soma
out of the many hanged and shot), or receive with praise for their evidence of promptitude and energy such sentences as these in the report of a Lord-Lieutenant for the disturbed districts I- " . . . It may suffice to state generally that a large number of rebels have been shot with arms in their hands, that a great number of prisoners have been tried and hung, shot, or flogged, and that a considerable number of prisoners are still in hand awaiting trial by court-martial."
" 77. We have been singularly fortunate in capturing or shooting a large number of the principal ringleaders in the rebellion, and many of whom were personally concerned in the atrocious butcheries of the 12th October in the Morant Bay Court House, or in the subsequent destruction of life and property further to the eastward, as the rebellion extended in that direction. Very many acknowledged their guilt before their execution."
Even Lord George Gordon was tried fairly at Westminster, and acquitted of the graver crime with which he was charged ; but then his less fortunate namesake was not a peer, and was a man of colour. Mr. Eyre, believing himself to have evidence of Mr. Gordon's dangerous designs, might rightly enough have "taken upon himself the responsibility " of that gentleman's "capture ; —but how far he was justified in taking upon himself the responsibility of his illegal trial and condemnation by court-martial for what was at worst probably a misdemeanour, and not apparently committed under the regime of military justice at all, he may yet learn unpleasantly in the due course either of law or of Ministerial criticism.
Governor Eyre's despatch, unless it were accompanied, or - should be followed, by documents of a very different descrip- tion indeed, is the confession of a political panic clouding the minds of gallant men, and leading to gross cruelty and in- justice. If England is to come out of this matter without a permanent stain upon her honour and her justice, we must have a searching investigation into all its circumstances, and, should present appearances be confirmed, an immediate cen- sure on those principally responsible. If there is any vestige of good faith in our political professions, what all the world would cry out for, if the persons shot, hanged, and flogged in such numbers, had been Irishmen or Englishmen, we must not refuse because they have been brown or black.
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