step, is rarely the mind to show most dis- culiar class of men who may be called sincrimination in choosing amongst several the gle-purpose men, who drive straight true end to hunt down. Profoundly as we away to the one goal before them, even if admire, and wonder at, the qualities Mr. they have to cut that way through half-aEyre showed in his great expedition, we dozen other equally important ends. We must say we think that, in the actual state believe that, as a rule, the one great advanof his own previous convictions and that of tage which aristocratic governors in India his fellow-colonists, there never was a less and elsewhere have had over middle-class justifiable sacrifice and risk incurred in all men of otherwise equal ability, and often the noble records of perilous discovery. If greater energy, has been their power of it was really his mere annoyance that he weighing complex social and political ends, should have persuaded the colonists to divert and resisting the tendency to drive away at the funds voted for the useless western ex- one thing at a time. Lord Canning, for inploration to the (as it proved) equally use- stance, saw that, though to repress the Indifess northern exploring expedition, which an rebellion was his first duty, there were made him resolve that their original intent many other great duties to be associated should not be thwarted,—though they with it, the greatest being to repress it themselves wished it to be abandoned, without injustice to the natives, and he got then, this shows a mind far too sensitive to the name of Clemency Canning. Sir John the imputation of having disappointed the Lawrence, on the other hand, is, if we mispublic hope. As we read Mr. Eyre's take him not, a little too much of the singlecharacter, hel et a mere feather's weight purpose class, who can carry through a great of fanciful feeling determine him to risk administrative work, but cannot so well everything for nothing. The mere fact govern an empire. But Mr. Eyre is, to all of thinking that he had persuaded the appearance, the very type of this class. His public to alter their plan and had dis- purposes are long straight grooves, out of appointed them, was sufficient to make which he does not get till he gets to the him take his own life and his friend's life end of them. He does not weigh and balin his hand, and throw them away on a ance the various influences he has to exersandy desert. In the same way no doubt, cise, but gives himself up to one tyrannical if he got the idea that the Jamaica whites object at a time. His mind is even unseruhad trusted him, and trusted him in vain, he pulous after it enters one of these grooves he would have been spurred on by a similar till it gets out of it again. He is possessed moral gad-fly to crush all sign of rebellion, by his aim. Negroes, members of legislaat any cost, however great, to himself or tive council, all must die, rather than that those who were thwarting his purpose. he shall not succeed in the idea thus hauntThese men of iron purpose, with inadequate ing him. That is, at least, how we reconjudgment in selecting their purpose, are cile the wonderful courage, fortitude, and, the most dangerous of rulers. When Mr. in a smaller sense, presence of mind that be Eyre was protector of the blacks on the South Murray River, he was responsible for only one trust, the protection of the Blacks to the best of his ability. And with one clear and simple trust before him, no doubt he did, as Mr. Henry Kingsley says, battle for it with a noble and unwearied pertinacity. But in Jamaica he was not protector of the Blacks, but Governor of the whole island, he had therefore a number of THE POLICY OF THE PRESIDENT IN THE different and in some respects conflicting interests amongst which to choose, and so was, we think, pretty sure to make a temporary idol of that duty which for the moment seemed most imperative. The blacks were murdering white men. He thought of nothing but the most drastic measures for repressing that tendency on the part of the negroes, and lost view of that complexity of the judicial duty which is of the essence of a governor's functions. Mr. Eyre seems to us to be one of the pe has shown, with the unscrupulous arbitrariness, and want of presence of mind in the larger sense, which seem to us to breathe through his great Jamaica despatch. From the Economist, 28 Oct. SOUTH. IT is one of the many evils of the American Constitution that it induces politicians to examine every utterance or reporte i utterance of the President with overstrained anxiety. His opinion is as important as that of an English Premier, while he can no more be cross-questioned than an English Sovereign. He has no representative in Congress, and only one constitutional mode of communicating with the people he rules, which one is very seldom employed. Poli from Kentucky after the people of that State had refused to insert the necessary provision in their constitution, and no convention at all having been called in Texas. The Governor reports that it would as yet be dangerous, and Texas therefore is not pressed. With the exception of that State, however, the entire South will by December be absolutely free from military control, and at liberty to remodel their legal system as they please, without interference from Washington. Commerce is already reviving. The specie hoarded during the war is coming out, the railways are under reconstruction, and there exists a strong probability that the Southern members, if admitted to Congress at all, will be so powerful, as, with the aid of the President, to be virtual rulers of the Republic. They will have, it must be remembered, the right of electing members not only for themselves, but for the blacks; for while the latter, like women, have no votes, they are, like women, counted in the electoral census according to which members are apportioned. The Southerners, will have many allies among the democrats and the sympathy of the mercantile class, and even if not possessed of a majority, will hold the position the Tory party holds in the present Parliament. Their exclusion, though threatened by the Republicans, is, we think, improbable. Supported by the whole people, that party might venture on such a defiance of the feeling in favour of State rights, but supported only by a section, though the more numerous section, and opposed to an irremovable Executive Government, they would run too much risk of seeing their acts to be declared illegal, and themselves an imperfect Congress. Besides, a party which is in the majority is sure to believe that it can use its majority in a popular assembly without expelling its foes. ticians are reduced, therefore, to watch him as despotic sovereigns are watched, to study his casual utterances, and letters on common-place subjects, and replies to deputations, if by any means they may thence extract some clue to his real designs and will. This is, we imagine, the secret of the importance attached to President Johnson's remarks to the deputation from South Carolina, and to the coloured regiment which recently passed through Washington. The first series of speeches really reveal nothing except that the President is disposed to treat all prisoners, including Mr. Davis, with great clemency, that he is inclined to a stringent vagrant law pressing equally on whites and blacks, and that he defines liberty as simply the right to work and enjoy the products of labour, a very limited definition. But the conversation, though it throws some light on his views, indicating, for example, that he would accept negro testimony, quantum valeat, throws none on his policy, none, for example, on the point whether he will insist on such testimony being received. The speech to the negroes is equally obscure. He told them, indeed, that the United States was their country as much as anybody else's, a remark received with disapprobation by many of the white men standing round, and that they must respect marriage, and that they should improve themselves, but gave no hint as to the extent to which the freedom necessary to those ends should be secured. He evidently reserves any detailed expression of his views and decisions for his message to Congress to be delivered in the beginning of December, and meanwhile it is by his acts he must be judged. Those acts show, in our opinion, distinctly that Mr. Johnson has made up his mind to reconstruct the Union by pushing the principal of State rights to its logical conclusion without any guarantees for the coloured We cannot, as dispassionate observers, population other then the bare prohibition of look forward to this prospect with anything legal slavery. If any State chooses to grant like complacency. No man who has studied full civil rights to its black inhabitants well, the history of the last four years in America but if it chooses to refuse them well also; if will think himself justified in assigning limits it passes laws binding the negro to the soil to the American power of overcoming politthat is no reason for interference, or even ical difficulties, but the Government of the for official remonstrance. Accordingly orders Union appears to us to be preparing most have been issued disbanding all colored troops serious dangers for itself, and it may be for except a few to be employed in unhealthy the world. The Southerners, if masters at garrisons, the Freedmen's bureaus are being home and powerful in Washington, are cerrapidly abolished, governors are accepted no tain to rebuild society on the aristocratic toriously hostile to the negro, the right of vot-base, that is, to reinvigorate the main ing is not demanded, and though the Pres- element of political discord between the two ident advises the reception of negro testi- sections, and thus lay the seeds of a future mony, he has not made it a condition. In- war, are certain to reassert, in almost its deed, in two States slavery itself is not old strength, the dangerous doctrine of abolished, martial law having been withdrawn State Sovereignty, and are nearly certain THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXI. 1440. tives. Most men will fight well when vie tory is the only way to avoid massacre, and Anglo-Saxons, under such circumstances, seem lifted altogether out of themselves The Southerners fought splendidly, but i they had the conviction which flashed on Anglo-Indians after Cawnpore, and had fought as they did, the South might have been conquered, but not its inhabitants. From the Daily News, 30th November. THE NEGRO MASSACRES IN JAMAICA. to tamper in some way with a debt contracted to ensure their own subjugation. Mr. Morgan, the democratic candidate for the governorship of Pennsylvania, advised repudiation on the ground of the severity of the terms on which the loans were raised, and though he found little support he must have expected adhesion from sympathizers with the South. It would be difficult to conceive an event which would be more disastrous to the cause of freedom throughout the world than a repudiation of this war debt, and the immense privileges accorded to the South. certainly increase the risk of its being repudiated. These things are independent of the negro, but it is im- THE further intelligence which the West possible to pass in silence over the fate of India mail brings from Jamaica must infour millions of human beings. Apart al- tensify the anxiety with which the acts ef together from sentimentalism, it is certain the authorities there have been regarded that the experiment of allowing him free- throughout England. We obtain no furdom, had it been fairly tried and succeeded, ther insight into the evidence of a plot by would have been of incalculable benefit to which the massacre of the alleged rebels has the world. It would have proved to a dem- been said to be justified. On this head every onstration that the principles of civil and thing still stands on the footing of rumour, political freedom are applicable to the of hearsay evidence, of statements that "it inferior races, a proposition still denied with is said" there was a conspiracy. Considerbad results in Africa, India, and Turkey. ing the constant sitting of courts-martial, Even if it had failed, the world would have the surrender of so many voluntary prisongained experience where it now has only a ers, the torturing by the lash on every side, theory, and the higher races might have and the final admission that order is now retained the guidance of the lower with so far secured that an amnesty has been much clearer conscience, and, therefore, issued, it is certainly incredible that, if firmer purpose. To interrupt such an ex- overwhelming evidence of such a conspir periment is in any case an evil, but to inter- acy exists, it should not have oozed out, rupt it by allowing the slaveholders to subject and should not have been published in the their freedmen to laws menacing to their hap- newspapers of the island. piness, injurious to the competition of free set- sources of information, as well as in the tlers, and hostile to the principles upon which Governor's speech to the House of Assem the nation has been founded and has grown bly, we search in vain for great, is excusable only on a plea which the column after column filled with recapitula President does not put forward- -a para- tion of the particulars of the first horrid mount necessity. We cannot but fear that outbreak in Morant Bay; we find a state when the troops are all withdrawn and the ment by each survivor of all he saw and Southern States all reconstituted, and the all he suffered; we find the despatches of Southern members reseated in Congress, the several commanders of parties, and the North will look round and find that the copious details of every event by corre fruits of the great war in which it has been victorious have been most of them thrown away. It would have been wiser to wait. "volcano Of course none of these objections apply But in these it. We find spondents of the press. to the President's resolve to show clemen- been this determination to make Ja cy to individuals. The world has decided, maica a second Hayti"-we are furnished without much thinking on the matter, that with not one tittle that would bear a no excessive severity to political crime is im- ment's examination in an English court of moral, and whether the world is right or not it is quite clear that it is unwise. If the disaffected are few persecution, only makes them martyrs, and if they are many, it is justice. evidence on is to be seen But the character of the which this alleged plot rests perhaps most clearly from w 11 at has het well to deprive them of the stimulus to ener- published as conclusive proof of Mr. G. W. gy contained in the conviction that con Gordon's guilt. We yesterda laid before quest or execution are the only alterna- our readers an address which had been published by that gentleman prior to a meeting of St. George-in-the-East, called by the Custos himself, in July last. This document is furnished by the paper we have already quoted from as a specimen of his speeches and proclamations by which "the masses were inflamed." And what does this seditious incitement and evidence of treasonable conspiracy contain? An invitation to the people to attend the meeting the authorities had called · -a recommendation that Mr. Cardwell's "very indiscreet despatch" should be "well-handled in a loyal spirit". an assurance that "We know that our beloved Queen is too noble-hearted to say anything unkind even to her most humble subjects, and we believe that Mr. Cardwell and her Majesty's other ministers are gentlemen too honourable and honest in their intentions wilfully to wound the feelings of her Majesty's colonial subjects; but we fear they have been deceived and misled, and the consequence is a serious grievance to our people; but we advise them to be prudent yet firm in their remonstrances, and we have no doubt that truth will ultimately prevail." number killed by the rioters on the 11th October was sixteen, and two planters were killed next day. For these deaths the vengeance taken by courts-martial in the town of Morant Bay alone is stated, by a correspondent who seems to have been at pains to be accurate, as "up to date," on 26th October, 102 rebels executed. The courtsmartial were still, however, in full swing, and on the 27th eighteen more were sent to the gallows, on the 28th eleven more, and on the 30th sixteen more. At this period the despatch closes. But while thus the number executed in the town alone was 147, the same careful correspondent adds -"It may not altogether be uninteresting to your readers to know that slightly over 1,050 rebels have been hanged and shot in the parish of St. Thomas up to date." These, however, are only the executions in the form of martial law. Of how many were shot down in the bush, or slain on the ashes of their homes, no account can ever be given; only we know that rivers are described as foul with the pollution of the dead bodies that are festering on their banks, that whole districts are described as impenetrable from the stench of corpses, and that certain roads are described as fringed with carcases of “rebels." We are told by the Colonial Standard of Nov. 6, that "Mr. Justice Kirkland, the "People of St. Ann's, Poor people of St. only acting authority at Bath, received a Ann's, Starving people of St. Ann's, Naked verbal order to shoot prisoners, but did not people of St. Ann's, you who have no sugar estates to work on nor can find other employ consider that authority enough for such a ment, we call on you to come forth. Even if proceeding. He sent off to Morant Bay for you be naked, come forth, and protest against a confirmation, but delayed, from some the unjust representations made against you cause, starting his despatch, so much so that by Mr. Governor Eyre and his band of cus- the prisoners have increased to between 120 todes. You don't require custodes to tell your and 150 in the meantime." But when there woes; but you want men free of government was no ground for either shooting or hanginfluence you want honest men- you wanting prisoners, the cat was always available. men with a sense of right and wrong, and who can appreciate you. Call on your ministers to reveal your true condition, and then call on Heaven to witness, and have mercy." And then an earnest and passionate, yet surely most loyal and constitutional entreaty: Is this evidence which we in England can be asked to accept of a deep-laid plot for the massacre of every white man at Christmas, under the auspices of the G. W. Gordon who writes such words? Was there any wilder perversion of honest meaning and legal acts found in the mouths of the infamous informers who two centuries ago hatched the Popish plot, than in the production of such a document as damning evidence of the writer's ferocious treason? But while such is the evidence of crime, so far as during a month of trials and slaughtering it has been made public, the evidence of its punishment is very different. It will be remembered that the total The same paper tells us flogging is going on children detected as robbers are catted and from morning to night. Many women and let go daily. The greater criminals are sent on to Morant Bay to be hanged or shot. Details are furnished of the jests of the sailors on the sufferings of the miserable wretches on whom they are performing this hideous office. Nay, with the last refinement of cruelty the lash is applied, before trial, to those who are set apart for trial, and who are afterwards shot!`. But we cannot pollute our columns with more of such appalling details. If but a thousandth part of such tales as form the staple of the Jamaica newspapers — and which are narrated with heartiest applause are true, hell itself has broke loose in that wretched island. But the demons are not the blacks, who burst into the sudden fury of a single day, and never afterwards offered the remotest show of resistance. They are the white men, who, for week after week, have been holding their feast of blood; who have, by form of law, taken fifty lives for each one that they themselves lost; who have, on pretence of a future insurrection, made a whole region barren with extermination, and uninhabitable with the pestilence of putrifying bodies; who gloat and jest over the tortures they inflict ere they mercifully slay; who flog naked women and children; and who blaspheme Almighty God with their thanks for his mercies vouchsafed in delivering their enemies into their hands. It is no longer human nature that exists in that land; drunk with blood and maddened with cruelty, our soldiers and sailors have become as wild animals, and have lost every vestige and sentiment of humanity, while they bandy compliments on their common triumphs over panic-stricken and fugitive wretches, over a foe who has never crossed a sword with them in fight, nor ever fired a musket-shot in their" glorious campaign." This awful business must be stopped if we would not have all civilization rise to execrate the name of Englishmen. MR. GORDON'S TRIAL AND EXECUTION. THE following is all the account given of the trial of Mr. Gordon, from which it appears that notes of the evidence on which he was sent to execution were withheld from the public: 1 "About twelve o'clock on the 20th of October prisoners, among them George William Gordon, were brought out and lined in front of the wharf where the courts-martial were about to be held. In order to save time two courts were formed the one composed of Colonel Lewis, of the St. Catherine's Militia, Captain Espent, of the Kingston Militia, and Captain Astwood, of the Kingston Cavalry; the other composed of Second Lieutenant Brent, commander of the gun-boat Nettle, Second Lieutenant Herrington, commander of the gun-boat Onyx and Ensign Kelly, of the 4th West India Regi ment. At two o'clock the same day (Saturday) the trial of George W. Gordon commenced. He was tried before the military court, presided over by Second Lieutenant Brent. He was given a very patient trial, and was allowed to crossexamine all the witnesses through the President of the Court, and, above all, was permitted to enter into a lengthy defence. The trial lasted till past candle-light, when the court was ordered to be cleared. The court sat in delibe ration for nearly half an hour, during which time there was a profound silence, and each one drew in his breath in fearful suspense in anticipation of the future. At the order, “Open the court," given to the Provost-Marshal, every eye was bent forward; every ear was eagerly listening, and one could almost fancy that the beating of every heart was heard in the room. But this fearful suspense was heightened still more by the voice of the President of the Court pronouncing only the words, "This Court is dissolved." The prisoner was then taken charge of by the Provost-Marshal, and led back separate from the other rebels under the ProvostMarshal's charge at the station. I have full fed to forward them for publication until leave notes taken of the trial, but I am not permitis given me to do so by the Brigadier-General. The charges against George William Gordon were: 1st, high treason and sedition against her Majesty the Queen; 2nd, inciting to murder and rebellion. The sentence of the court-martial was not told to Mr. Gordon until Monday, one hour before its execution. He occupied that time in writing an affecting letter to his wife, who is an educated English lady. The line towards the close, which says "the General has come," indicates the arrival of the executioners: "My beloved Wife,-General Nelson has just been kind enough to inform me that the cour:martial on Saturday last has ordered me to be hung, and that the sentence is to be executed this world of sin and sorrow. I regret that my in an hour hence; so that I shall be gone from worldly affairs are so deranged; but now it cannot be helped. I do not deserve this sentence; for I never advised or took part in any insurrection. All I ever did was to recommend the people who complained to seek redress in a legitimate manner; and if in this I erred or have been misrepresented, I do not think I deserve the extreme sentence. It is, however, the will of my Heavenly Father that I should thus suffer in obeying his command, to relieve the poor and needy, and to protect, as far as I was able, the oppressed. And glory be to his name; and I thank him that I suffer in such a cause. Glory be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and I can say it is a great honour thus to suffer, for the servant carrot be greater than his Lord. I can now say with Paul, the aged, The hour of my departure is at hand, and I am ready to be offered up. I have fought a good fight, I have kept the faith, and henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me.' Say to all friends an affectionate farewell, and that they must not grieve for me, for I die innocently. Assure Mr. Airy and all others of the truth of this. Comfort your heart. I certainly little expected this. You must do the best you can, and the |