The new mail from Jamaica brings not only news, but
an interpreter of news, Brigadier Nelson. As he examined all the evidence in Mr. Gordon's case himself, and then approved the sentence of the court-martial, he can probably tell us something of the rights of the Jamaica proceedings at least on that head. It seems, however, that he will have to return with Sir H. Storks, as his presence will certainly be essential to the local investigation which the commission are to conduct. What the Brigadier has to tell has not yet transpired, but it seems that the Governor and Legislature of Jamaica are already at work trying to toss from the one to the other the responsibility of having been the first to credit the story of a widely organized insurrection. In November the Assembly passed a resolution requesting Mr. Eyre to lay before them the evidence of his statement that "a mighty danger threatens the land," and Mr. Eyre replied some- what tartly that plenty of frightened white men had told him so, but that "the best test perhaps of the accuracy of the information upon which the Government founded its opinion is to be found in the opinion of the two branches of the Legislature in
their replies to the opening address." Thus the Legislature believed because the Governor said so, and then the Governor believed more firmly because the Assembly had believed him when he said so. He refers indeed to " unsanctioned drillings carried on in various places," but he does not even say they were secret, as they were in Ireland, and what should we have said if the Irish drillings, though followed by a similar outbreak, had been made the occasion for such a massacre as this ?
