The news from Jamaica last Saturday fax more than bore
out the worst fears entertained amongst is concerning the conduct of the Army in suppressing the disturbances. Even the Times now speaks in a tone of denunciation as strong as this journal ever adopted. Colonel Hobbs has a friend in the special correspondent of the Telegraph, who makes that gentleman's case even worse for him than before. For the shooting of Wellington at 400 yards Colonel Hobbs accounted by saying that he wished to destroy the belief in
Wellington's magical powers as an Obeab man by killing him in full sight of the whole village—(which could only be done in this way !) For the subsequent admitted mutilation of Wellington's corpse Colonel Hobbs cannot account at all, but his friend in the Telegraph says that he gave his consent " hastily, and I am sure thoughtlessly." What would the English nation have said if Paul Bogle's friends had urged, in extenuation of the supposed mutilation of the Rev. V. Herschell, that " Paul Bogle hastily, and I am sure thought- lessly," assented to it? Colonel Hobbs, we are further told by his . friend in the Telegraph, "franklydeplores" the tone of his celebrated letter,—the letter about Paul Bogle's valet being tied to his stirrup, and assisted by a revolver at his head to remember who were in the conspiracy and deserved to be shot, and who were not,—and explains it thus,—" a feeling of most sincere thankfulness at having brought my regiment safely out of Stoney Gut without any casual- ties, which I considered almost miraculous, caused a reaction on my spirits, and induced me to write in a more open and cheerful style than usual. But my letter was intended for the General's eye only, and not for the press." Surely it was only kind in the Gieral to let the public share with him the evidence of Colonel Hobbs' "thankfulness," and of that " cheerful" spirit which it produced. No doubt the cheerfulness took a strange form. Like the cheer- fulness of Fagan, the " merry old gentleman " in Oliver Twist, it ran rather strongly towards murder and hanging. Still we cannot regret that the British public know what the thankfulness and elation of " officers and gentlemen" suppressing imaginary negro insurrections- practically mean. They appear to mean a state of mind even more disgraceful in them than the imputed but, as we now know, imagi-. nary atrocity ascribed to the negro mob, of mixing Baron Kettel- hodt's brains with rum, and drinking the mixture, would have- meant in the negroes. In other words, they mean a state of intoxi-. cation with blood.
