NEWS OF THE WEEK.
WE have discussed elsewhere the terrible news from Jamaica, and touched on the mode in which the British authorities have suppressed the revolt. But the more the details are studied, the more difficult it seems to exonerate some of the officers engaged in this task from the charge of cruel and vindictive barbarity. The imme- diate execution of Paul Bogle and his companions, the ringleaders at Morant Bay, was probablyneceasary, and certainlyjustifiable, but the slaughter of men who came in voluntarily to surrender, after the same fashion, and of all captured by Maroons, or the native police, on the merest hearsay evidence,'reads like pure butchery. Colonel Hobbs, 6th Royals (not. to be confounded, as he has been, with Captain Hole, against whom there is no evidence of this kind), seems to have distinguished himself the most in this glorious work. We have given one extract from his despatch elsewhere. Here is another ;—" About daylight this morning, in passing through this village of cross-roads, where the rebels have destroyed everything, I found a number of special constables, who had captured a number of prisoners from the rebel camp. Finding their guilt clear, and being unable to either take or leave them, I had them all shot. The constables then hung them up upon trees (eleven in number). Their countenances were all diabolical, and they never flinched the very slightest." The last sentence was meant no doubt to convey Colonel Hobbs' evidence for the clearness of their guilt. Colonel Hobbs is enamoured of the gallant deeds of Quantrell and Forrest.
