9 DECEMBER 1865, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

IMMODERATE MODERATION.

11ffcry for moderation—for suspense of judgment- -daring the long period which must frequently elapse be- tween our first knowledge of unpleasant and apparently dis- creditable facts like the Jamaica massacre and the complete evidence concerning them—has always a just sound about it, and, properly understood, not only sounds just, but is just. If it only means take care that your mind shall be kept un- prejudiced towards all new evidence, so that if persons who now seem guilty should come out innocent, and persons who now seem innocent should turn out to be guilty, you will have no violent effort to make, no strong prepossessions to overcome, in order to conform your mind to the new facts,'—if that is really what it means, then the cry is strictly just, and should be listened to by every fair-minded man. There has been such a suspense of judgment as this in one or two of our contemporaries with regard to the Jamaica massacre. The Pall Mall Gazette, for instance, for some time withheld all criticism, and only on the appearance of Governor Eyre's despatch passed a very temperate provisional judgment against his conduct so far as it could be judged from his own words. The Examiner went further, and while apparently justifying all that had been done up to the receipt of Governor Eyre's despatch, quivered in something like suspense for one number, and then definitely turning round, declared that, so far as we can yet judge, there would appear to have been quite unjustifiable panic and blood- shed. But the speakers and the writers who chiefly cry out for suspense of judgment mean, and scarcely pretend to deny that they mean, something quite different from this,—namely, to plead justification for what has been done even on such excuses for it as have already appeared. No doubt they ask those who differ from them to wait for further evidence,—but then they as much as avow that they mean further evidence on their own side. What they cry out for is that Governor Eyre, who as yet is the only party to these transactions who has had any opportunity of stating his case fully, shall be allowed to hunt up further evidence of the supposed conspiracy to murder all the whites and mulattoes at Christmas, not that there is any need at all of further evidence on the other side from the friends of the negroes who have been slaughtered in thousands. What proves this is, that they quite decline to condemn, nay, they justify, what has been done even provisionally, even supposing that our news should turn out to be a fair preliminary outline of what Las occurred, allowing of course for the obvious fact that it has all come from white, and therefore somewhat partial, sources of evidence. We can admit that persons in the condition of Miss Eyre, with an intimate knowledge of and love for the Governor, may think that they have far better reason, nay, may have far better reason, for putting absolute faith in him, and being sure that the main justifications for what he has done are still unknown to us, than for judg- ing on the particular evidences in this case. Miss Eyre may know that her general evidence as to her brother's equity is far stronger than any evidence against it hitherto produced in this special case. But general writers and speakers who have not got this special source of private faith, and yet refuse to condemn provisionally, indeed even justify, what has happened on the evidence we have already received, really do prejudge the case flagrantly. They are only one degree better than the paper which declined even to let its readers forra their own judgment on the Jamaica news because that news bore against its own view of the case, and was therefore branded by it as "preposterous." What does Lord Elcho, for instance, mean by calling for inquiry and savagely protesting against any unfavourable expression of preliminary opinion Let us see. "When without sufficient data," says Lord Elcho, "without information, writers in the press, sitting in their arm-chairs in the safety and quiet and comfort of their homes, denounced their fellow-countrymen who had been exposed in Jamaica to these great perils, and called down vengeance on their heads—when he heard of orators, after a comfortable dinner at Manchester or Blackburn, branding Governor Eyre and our fellow-countrymen in Jamaica who had to struggle with and overcome these great perils—when he saw this, he said his blood boiled at seeing men in such positions branding those in the colony as cowards and murderers. Inquiry into these proceedings at Jamaica had been demanded, and he trusted the inquiry would be search- ing, because he was convinced that the more searching it was, the more would Governor Eyre be justified for the course he had taken in saving by his courage and presence of mind that possession to the British Crown, and the lives of every white man in it." Now is that suspended judgment or not ? As to the argument about people sitting in easy chairs and eating com- fortable dinners being on that account incompetent to criticize people who are in peril and exciting circumstances, we do not see either its force or its application to the present case. 'What is meant is of course tlis,t, a man who can be very Inst in criticizing what others do in great peril and panic, might do just the same, or worse, if he were himself in great peril and panic. Just so, and he would therefore want critics who were net in great peril and panic to decide how far lie was justified or not justified in the violent acts so committed. We can quite conceive that Lord Elcho would have been even more "prompt" in killing negroes than Governor Eyre, nay, that the present writer might have been just as subject to the infection of a social panic as Lord Elcho, but then, though he would pro- bably in that case not have criticized and condemned, but rather justified and defended his own acts, it would have been very fortunate for Jamaica that other critics would have been ready to criticize him, and far more ready to criticize him than they have been to criticize Governor Eyre, who had a previous reputation for justice and gallantry. The check of pub- lic criticism comes absolutely to an end, if you are never to- speak- harshly of an act into which you might have been be- trayed yourself. Who will be rash enough to say, sitting in a comfortable arm-chair after a good dinner, that if he had no home at all and no dinner he would not commit a crime to get one ? And yet who will hesitate to punish him who does so T But the application of Lord Elcho's criticism is even worse than its logic. If we are to be prohibited from personally condemning Mr. Eyre for what he did because we cannot enter into his trials and difficulties, on what sort of authority are we bound to condemn Mr. Gordon for what he did ? And yet one of the two—both British subjects, and men with a considerable antecedent evidence in their favour—we must condemn—either Mr. Gordon for conspiracy to massacre al? the whites and mulattoes in Jamaica, or Mr. Eyre for execut- ing him without a trial. This spurious charity of Lord Elcho'a really means—preferring to believe several men of influence and properly closely allied with their intended victims, and a vast majority of the negroes of the island, guilty of the most hideous of all crimes, rather than believe that the English, frightened by a visible crime of great magnitude had lost their heads, and begun to revel in the infliction of a bloody and indiscriminate vengeance. Lord Elcho's "blood boils" that colonial governors and planters should be deemed (on fair evidence) cruelly unjust and vindictive, but it is not liable to any thermometrical derangement at the charge that colonial gentlemen of colour and thousands upon thou- sands of their creatures should be deemed (on scarcely any evidence) assassins of the worst dye. Nor is Lord Elcho'a idea of suspense of judgment more remarkable than Lord Eustace Cecil's. "Nobody ought to know better than Mr. Bright," says that young nobleman, "that according to the maxim of our law the meanest of Her Majesty's subjects was never held to be guilty unless he was proved to be so." We confess that when these words first struck our eye we thought Lord Eustace was arguing for Mr. Gordon, and severely con- demning Governor Eyre for not giving him a fair trial before a civil court of justice,--but that application of them had not entered his head, for, "believing, as he did, that Governor Ere and the other officers concerned would come unscathed out of a public inquiry, he would leave them in the hands of a generous public." There is clearly no suspense of judg- ment here,—as to either Mr. Gordon or Mr. Eyre. Mr. Peacocke, M.P., has much the same notion as to the duty of suspense of judgment, namely, the duty of waiting for more facts on one side of the case, and prejudging all the facts on the other. Hear him :— "We had recently seen a negro insurrection in Jamaica where men who had been placed in a position of perfect equality with their white brethren, and who even possessed that from which the 9/. householder in this country was excluded (a laugh), absolutely organized for next Christmas Day the massacre of every white inhabitant upon the island, secretly impelled, doubtless, by that innate jealousy which the black man felt of the innate superiority of the white man. When we thus found men who were suffering from no grievance at all, but who were placed in a perfect position of equality, both politically and socially, with the whites, rising in insurrection and committing atrocities from the very perusal of which most men's minds revolted, he was surprised to find a party in this country with minds so peculiarly, and he trusted so exceptionally, constituted that their sympathies were not with • their own white race, but rather with the black miscreants who had indulged in such abominable excessea The principal point which had been raised against the Government of Jamaica was that Mr. Gordon was taken from Kingston, where he had given himself up, into a district in which martial law existed, and that he was there tried and executed. But it was not fair to condemn the Government for the course which they had taken without knowing all ..the facts."

We do not hesitate to say that Mr. Peacocke here prejudges 'every fact (even wholly without evidence) on one side, and then reproaches his opponents for prejudging anything on the other. He is sure about the massacre fixed for Christmas Day ; he is certain there was no grievance or outrage that led to the riot ; his mind shrinks from the murder of eighteen men, and does not shrink at all from the slaughter of 2,000; but the one point on which he does ask for fresh evidence is the little difficulty as to Mr. Gordon's trial by court-martial, and even there he suggests what sort of fresh evidence he would like, and by anticipation accepts it as sufficient. What sort of suspense of judgment is this ? Nay, he even goes on to accuse all who differ from him of sympathizing with "the black miscreants" who murdered the volunteers at Morant Bay. You cannot object to killing 2,000 in expiation for the murder of eighteen, without being accused by Mr. Peacocke of sympathizing vrith the murderers of the eighteen.

Nor is the greatest evil in the apparent justice of this cry for "suspense of judgment,"—practically interpreted as suspense of any unfavourable judgment against persons in authority, and predisposition to unfavourable judgment against the persons not in authority,—limited to the case of those who use it with the obvious passion of men like Lord Elcho, Lord Eustace Cecil, and Mr. Peacocke, to avert an unfavourable judgment from one party and bring it down on the other. Their professed moderation is in reality only a mode of covering immo- derate political passions. The really greatest evil is that this cry, unnerves public opinion altogether. Sincerely impartial people, who are told that they cannot judge at all for weeks,—who are persuaded that it is no use trying to form an opinion at all till more facts come, and who therefore defer their rather vague inquiries for the present, find all their interest evaporated when the evidence, after months of delay, at length arrives, and so it often happens that no strong public opinion is ever in fact formed at all. We lose the advantage of strong public impulses without gaining the advantage of a severely just public judgment. There are men no doubt—we hope there are some of them among our rulers —who can weigh the past with severe justice, and inflict what sentence they think right on full evidence, even when all the effervescence of the first emotion has long passed away. But popular opinion cannot do this, and a crime against the people of England once committed, is, as far as popular opinion goes, either punished at once or not at all. To keep the public mind in the limp and flabby condition of long preliminary

• tmeertainty as to all political acts worthy of public con- demnation, is a part of the true policy of those who wish to screen the offenders. For our own parts we would always pro- test against violent and hasty verdicts, still more against 'violent and hasty punishments,—but the expression of strong provisional opinions on what seems to be a great cruelty and injustice, even though it may eventually be shown to be otherwise,—so long as we confess candidly the element of doubt which still hangs over the best opinion we can form,—is essential to any vivid political life at all. With- out it, the time for expressing with emphasis public ap- probation and public indignation would always slip by till it was too late,—the sharpness and spring of popular feeling would be destroyed, —and we should have only a pallid ambiguousness and puzzle-headed hesitation of public feeling, instead of a warm political life that is sometimes precipitate, but even when precipitate is always willing to recant its errors. We are just now in some danger as a people of falling into this hesitating and dilatory habit of intellect, possibly from mere indolence,--the new generation always wants reasons for not thinking and acting,—and the best excuse we are ever likely to find for this intellectual paralysis is immoderate indulgence in the habit of political moderation.