369 have traversed with troops all the disturbed regions, not a single casualty has befallen any of our soldiers or sailors, and they are all in good health." Such was the "desperate struggle" which made the Times feel it impossible to find any fault with the letters of Colonel Hobbs, Captain Hole, and Colonel Elkington. We trust that we are not indulging a faulty degree of national pride, when we express our hope and belief-although the Times does consider such a hope as utterly idle-that by degrees British officers may learn to speak somewhat more like gentlemen and Christians, and that the manner in which the reports of these officers have been received by their countrymen will materially tend to prevent, on any future occasion, what the Times accepts as inevitable.

Now let us compare this account with the verdict of the Royal Commissioners, of whom we may very safely say, that they are not likely to be prejudiced in favour of "rebels." An officer of high military rank, himself for years past a colonial governor, and two high Conservative lawyers, both holding judicial positions in England, would hardly be under any temptation to favour "rebels and murderers," merely "because they have black skins," as Mr. Eyre is pleased publicly to assert is the case with all who in any degree object to his proceedings; for, of course, men so abandoned have no claim to benefit by the ordinary rule of gentlemen against imputing motives.

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And first, it is exceedingly significant that the Commissioners' Report always carefully avoids the phrases "rebellion" or rebels." It is only by examining it with this special view that any one can see with how much trouble this has been done. It was a matter of some difficulty, especially as all the documents and testimony brought before the Commissioners by Mr. Eyre and his agents always called the sufferers "rebels," and speak of "the rebellion." We have gone through the whole Report with this special object, and we find that the terms used are always "the late disturbances," "the riot," "the outbreak," "the disorder," "resistance to lawful authority." By far the strongest terms employed are "insurrection" and "insurgents." These are used twice. But in one of those places, beyond all doubt, and in the other to all appearance, they are used, not to express the judgment of the Royal Commissioners after due inquiry, but the view taken by the Jamaica authorities in the excitement of the moment. This important distinction the Commissioners lay down in these words:-"We know how much easier it is to decide after than before the event, and we are aware, too, that sometimes the success of the measure adopted for the prevention of an evil deprives the authors of those measures of the evidence they VOL. VII.—NO. XIV. [New Series.]

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would otherwise have had of their necessity. We have endeavoured, therefore, to place ourselves as far as possible in the position of the Governor and his advisers, at the time their determination was arrived at." This is obviously the meaning of the term, "this apparently formidable insurrection." In like manner, those whom Mr. Eyre always calls "rebels," the Commissioners invariably and studiously call "rioters," the "mob," or at a later stage "the prisoners." The importance of this careful choice of language was felt by Mr. Eyre's apologist in the Quarterly. He boldly cuts the Gordian knot by a simple misstatement of the fact. He says (p. 243):

"In these observations we have assumed that there was a rebellion, and that it was a deliberate and preconcerted rebellion. In both these assumptions we have the support of the Commissioners." The fact, as we have seen, is the opposite.

In the same passage from which we quote these words, we have a curious illustration of the manner in which vehement prejudice leads men to believe and advance contradictory accusations. Nothing can be more strictly identical than the view of Jamaica affairs in the Quarterly and the Times. They might well be (not improbably were) written by the same hand. Yet the Times describes the special character of a negro insurrection" to be an almost supernatural power of secresy and wide ramification of a well-hatched plot; " while the Quarterly says, "Concert and deliberation are relative: they are shown in different degrees by different people. The power of combination is very weak in the Negro, compared with the same power in Europeans. If concert and conspiracy among negroes were to be measured by the same standard of definiteness that is applied to them in England, they could never be said to exist among negroes." "In Jamaica there was as much conspiracy as the Negro mind was capable of organizing." The cause of this difference is plain. The Quarterly was labouring to prove that there must really have been a plot, though the Royal Commissioners, after the strictest investigation, were satisfied that there was none. It pleads, therefore, what is always urged against all who demand just and fair government in the West Indies (and what is elaborately urged by Mr. Eyre himself in his appeal from the verdict of the Royal Commissioners to the whites of Jamaica): “You do not know the Negro. A negro plot is something quite different from a plot anywhere else." The Times, on the contrary, writing before the facts had been investigated, expressed the mere instinct of hatred by attributing to the Negro almost supernatural powers and qualifications for deep and dark con

spiracy. These outbreaks of passion and prejudice often remind us of those with which we are only too familiar, in the arguments of Protestants against the "Jesuits" and the "priests," whom they firmly believe to be invested with all contradictory bad qualities at once.

The Commissioners then decide that there was really at Morant Bay" a riot," "disturbance," "disorder," and "resistance to lawful authority;" that the Jamaica authorities, in the excitement of the moment, erroneously believed that there was a "formidable insurrection" and a conspiracy. They are firmly convinced that this conspiracy was merely what they call it, "supposed." But they believe that the "leaders of the rioters" (i.e., as they expressly say, the Bogles) had "a preconcerted plan, and that by them murder was distinctly contemplated;" i.e. not any general massacre, but the murder of certain individuals against whom they were deeply enraged. They are also of opinion that some of them contemplated the attainment of their ends by the "death or expulsion of the white inhabitants." They are equally certain that the resistance to authority arose from "local causes. The first of these causes, they say, was the desire of obtaining land free from payment of rent. We have been strongly struck in reading the evidence with the analogy upon this point between Jamaica and Ireland. The Commissioners felt themselves precluded from tracing the causes of discontent any farther than the immediate proximate causes of this particular outbreak. They say, "We were solicited to admit evidence with respect to a great variety of subjects, embracing almost the whole range of island politics for several years past;" but "we resolved, as far as we could, to confine ourselves to an examination of the causes which proximately and directly led to the disturbances; " therefore "we made it our endeavour to reject all evidence which, either in point of time or place, failed to conform to the above standard."

This, no doubt, was necessary; but it obviously limits the utility of the Report. We would gladly have had, from men so able and in a frame of mind so judicial, some judgment upon the causes by which the island was brought into so inflammable a condition. Mr. Eyre's theory is simple. He is convinced that as late as Nov., 1864, nothing could exceed the loyalty and good disposition of the peasantry. He then made a speech to the Colonial Parliament, immediately after making a tour round the whole island, with the exception of the parish of St. John. He said, "I am happy to have this opportunity of expressing publicly how extremely interesting and gratifying this tour was to me. In the varying scenery, climate, and industrial

pursuits of the different districts, I saw much to admire and value. But however diverse from each other in physical features or capabilities the several parishes might be, I found the inhabitants, one and all, animated by the same spirit of warm loyalty, considerate kindness, and generous hospitality." When reminded of this by Sir H. Storks, he said (on oath), "Yes, I most fully endorse that passage, and I most gratefully remember the feeling which I then noticed. The feeling of loyalty was undoubted wherever I went. I may state that in St. Thomas-in the-East, and Portland, especially in this district, wherever I went I was received with the greatest hospitality, not only by the gentry of the country but by the peasantry themselves. All the way they lined the road, and over each gateway there would be a couple of cocoa-nut boughs bent to the posts, and tied together, with fruit and flowers hanging from them, and my carriage was repeatedly inundated with bouquets. This was by the very people many of whom were recently in rebellion." He might have added, these smiling dwellings were the very houses burnt down twelve months later by his authority. Mr. Eyre, though no doubt a well-meaning man, is evidently no politician. He cannot imagine it possible that an excitable people could have made such a demonstration of loyalty, if, before that, they had felt or imagined any grievances. He does not know how readily a loyal-hearted peasantry jumps to the conclusion that a new governor, who visits them in a friendly and amicable spirit will be sure to set right all the grievances under which they have long been groaning. Had he witnessed the reception of George IV. by the peasantry of Ireland, he would no doubt have concluded that any discontent of which he afterwards heard must have been produced without a grievance merely by O'Connell's agitation, for he would have been sure, of his own knowledge, that so lately as July, 1820, no Irishman felt that he had anything to complain of. Accordingly he goes on to state, with regard to Jamaica, that he regards as the "primary origin of the agitation," "the letter of Dr. Underhill and the consequent meetings which took place." He mentions that on April 25th, 1865, he wrote to the Secretary of State, "transmitting the statement of distress and grievance from certain poor people of S. Ann's," in these words: "This is the first fruit of Dr. Underhill's letter." "I fear the result of Dr. Underhill's communication will have a very prejudicial influence in unsettling the minds of the peasantry, making them discontented with their lot and disinclined to conform to the laws which regulate their taxation, their civil tribunals, or their political status, all of which they have been informed are unjust, partial, or oppressive." It would be useless to tell Mr. Eyre,

or the writers in the Times and the Quarterly, that men happy, contented, and without grievance, are not so inflammable that their whole state of mind is to be unsettled and overthrown by a letter written by a gentleman in London, representing in very calm and sober language grievances which, as they assure us, never had any existence except in his imagination. Their only answer, we well know, would be that which Mr. Eyre makes to the Royal Commissioners,-" It is impossible that persons imperfectly acquainted with the negro character" can judge of such a matter. In fact the real root of the whole difference between Mr. Eyre and the planters on one side and the Commissioners and the people of England on the other, is that we will believe that negroes are human beings, and therefore capable of being influenced (in proportion to the degree of their cultivation) by the same motive and the same treatment which influence men of other races, while the others are convinced that they are wholly incapable of being affected by anything except force and terror. For our part, we heartily regret that the Royal Commissioners thought it inconsistent with their duty to examine whether there were really no grievances at an earlier date. We see many indications of them. For instance, the Royal Commissioners mention among the immediate causes of the outbreak in St. Thomas, "the want of confidence felt by the labouring class in the tribunals before which most of the disputes affecting their interests were carried for adjudication." Of course Mr. Eyre will at once account for this want of confidence by referring to "Dr. Underhill's letter;" and accordingly we have already seen, that in transmitting a complaint from the poor people at St. Ann's he expressly mentions the "civil tribunals" as one of the things against which, without any cause, Dr. Underhill had prejudiced them by false representations. But we find that Mr. Justice Ker, one of the judges of the Supreme Court of the island, writes, November 21st, 1865, "I am called upon to observe that St. Ann's has long had a real grievance. That grievance is the fact that the confidential clerk and manager of the leading mercantile firm there, the Messrs. Bravo, is at the same time clerk of the magistrates and deputy clerk of the peace. It is utterly impossible but that a very large proportion of the cases which come before the magistrates for adjudication are cases in which the Messrs. Bravo are directly or indirectly interested, or in which they have, or are believed to have, a bias. But how could an uninstructed population be persuaded that justice could be done in such cases. In point of fact they do not believe it, as I have occasion very well to know. The influence exercised by the clerk of the magis