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Mr. Eyre appears to have been liable, both in St.

Vincent's and Antigua, to similar panics. In St. Vincent's he was much fright- ened by a local demonstration against a magistrate, and twice re- quested troops from home, which were refused, and yet when lie left the island he testified to its prosperous and peaceful condition ; and in Antigua it seems, from Mr. W. G. Sewell's "Ordeal of free labour," that Mr. Eyre in 1858 actually asked for troops from a. neighbouring French island on account of a local riot, believed to be the beginning of "a deliberate conspiracy of the blacks to murder the white inhabitants of the island," but which was proved by a most searching investigation to be unpremeditated, and connected neither directly nor indirectly with any political design.

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