" The work, which is well executed, has a permanent interest and value. No lawyer and few students of history and politics should be without it." Globe, 22nd August, 1868. " The book is the work of a lawyer and a man of sense. It contains a full account of the present state of the law on the subject." Post, August, 1868. " Few lawyers or laymen were accurately informed as to the state of the law, in reference to the repression of insurrection or rebellion. No text book, so far as we know, was available, although the need of one must have occasionally been felt ; the omission to supply it being the more remarkable when we consider on the one hand how tenacious not only Englishmen but those who live under the same con- stitutional Government, are of their rights and liberties ; and on the other that officers of the Crown are responsible for neglect of duty, as well as for exceeding their jurisdiction. The object of Mr. Finlason is to make good the deficiency ; and praise must be accorded to him for the manner in which he has performed his task. He has been at great pains to collect all the legal and historical dicta bearing upon these points, and upon the legality of martial law in general, which were to be met with. He has moreover digested them with care, and discussed them ably and learnedly." Midland Counties Herald, September 10th, 1868 . " The case of Governor Eyre excited the greatest possible interest in this country. It did so for two reasons ; first, because of the uncertainty in regard to the legality of martial law, secondly because a political issue was supposed to underlie the legal question. The paradox that the law places the sword in the hand of its officers, and entrusts them with its power, only to punish such officers for using the discretionary authority according to their judgment, has no|foundation in fact. Governor Eyre, as the saviour of Jamaica, is entitled to the gratitude of Englishmen. For his lucid review of the authorities which protect our property and lives, we have to thank Mr. Fin- lason." Oxford Times, 17th October, 1868. " In every way the book before us corresponds with its predecessors in respect of clearness and correct jurisprudence. To lawyers it will be necessary, not to say in- dispensable, and to politicians useful. We heartily recommend the book to every student of our Constitution, as one which exhausts the law upon a much vexed question." Newcastle Daily Journal, 16th October, 1868. REPORT OF THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. EYRE, IN THE COURT OF QUEEN'S BENCH : With an Introduction, upon the Liability of a Colonial Governor to Criminal Prosecution. London : Stevens & Son, Bell Yard, and Chapman & Hall, Piccadilly. "Mr. Finlason, whose recent works on martial law are among the most im- portant contributions we possess to pur knowledge of a difficult subject, has now issued a full report of a case in which almost all the principles of his favourite study are involved. He has given us a long and faithful report of the trial with the indictment, the evidence from the depositions, and the charge of Mr. Justice Blackburn, the whole accompanied by an elaborate introduction." Globe Seotember 19th, 1868. JUSTICE TO A COLONIAL GOVERNOR ; or, Some Considerations on the Case of Mr. Eyre. (a. ) London : Chapman & Hall. " The book before us contains the substance of all the documents, discussions and proceedings relating to the case of Mr. Eyre, and the author certainly makes out a more complete justification of the much-persecuted ex-governor than has hitherto appeared It is impossible to rise from the reading of this work without being satis- fied that Mr. Eyre had good reason for every step he took in the suppression of the rebellion m Jamaica, and thac by those measures he spared the lives of the white population, and saved the island. Those who would understand the real merits of the position occupied by the Lord Chief Justice Cockburn in the matter of the Evre prosecution should read this work. It is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that this great lawyer was led away by popular feeling to take a view of the case not warranted by the law or the facts. No one has done so much as Mr Finlason d Exeter (a) The Introduction to the present work. THE HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE: BEING AN ACCOUNT, FOUNDED UPON OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS, OF THE im 0f % fopts in THE CAUSES WHICH LED TO IT, AND THE MEASURES TAKEN FOR ITS SUPPRESSION; THE AGITATION EXCITED ON THE SUBJECT, ITS CAUSES AND ITS CHARACTER; AND THE DEBATES IN PARLIAMENT, AND THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS, ARISING OUT OF IT. Scconti (Etuttcn, <55nIanjetJ anti W. F. FINLASON, ESQ., (Barrister -at- Law?) EDITOR OP "CROWN AND NISI PRIUS REPORTS" IN ALL THE COURTS, FOR THE YEARS FROM 1854 TO 1864 ; AUTHOR OF " COMMENTARIES ON MARTIAL LAW, "THE LAW OF RIOT AND REBELLION," &c., &c., &c. K LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, PICCADILLY. 1869. f Fra TO THE EIGHT HON. SIR WILLIAM ERLE, SOME TIME LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE COURT OF COMMON PLEAS, WHO, IN THE COURSE OF A LONG JUDICIAL CAREER, BY HIS EARNEST LOVE OF JUSTICE, HIS ADMIRABLE JUDICIAL ABILITIES, AND HIS MANY GREAT QUALITIES OF MIND, ATTAINED, IN NO ORDINARY DEGREE, THE RESPECT OF THE SUITORS, AND THE ESTEEM OF THE BAR, UPON A SUBJECT IN WHICH HE HAS TAKEN A GREAT INTEREST, AND WRITTEN (IT IS HOPED) IN THE SPIRIT OF JUSTICE AND OF TRUTH, IS, (WITH HIS KIND PERMISSION,) MOST RESPECTFULLY INSCRIBED. CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION : GENERAL PRINCIPLES BY WHICH THE CON- SIDERATION OF SUCH A SUBJECT MUST BE GOVERNED CHARACTER OF NEGRO INSURRECTIONS NEGRO REBELLIONS IN JAMAICA . . CAUSES OF REBELLION IN THE COLONY CONSIDERATIONS AS TO THE COURSE TO BE TAKEN IN THE EVENT OF REBELLION . . . INTENTION OF THE LEGISLATURE AS TO THE EXERCISE OF MARTIAL LAW AFTER CESSATION OF ACTUAL OR OPEN REBELLION How INDICATED, IN VARIOUS ACTS MARTIAL LAW IN DEMERARA MARTIAL LAW IN CEYLON ..... HOW UPHELD AND VINDICATED BY EARL RUSSELL AND SlR ALEXANDER COCKBURN .... DIFFERENT VIEWS TAKEN OF THE RECENT REBELLION REASONS FOR THIS DIFFERENCE .... AGITATION IN THE ISLAND PREVIOUS TO THE REBELLION . STATE OF THE COLONY UPON THE BREAKING OUT OF THE REBELLION AS TO THE FORCE AVAILABLE . THE HISTORY: BREAKING OUT OF THE REBELLION THE DESPATCHES OF MR. EYRE .... DESPATCHES OF THE SECRETARY OF STATE . ANSWERS OF MR. EYRE ..... GROSS EXAGGERATIONS AND MISCONCEPTIONS COMMISSION OF INQUIRY .... REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS STATEMENTS OF MR. EYRE . EVENTS SUBSEQUENT TO THE REPORT FINAL DESPATCH OF MR. CARD WELL PAGB i vi vi xii xii xv xvi xxiv xxv xliii* xliv Iv Ivi Ix Ixx Ixx Ixxii Ixxv xc 1 10 10 40 41 48 48 52 52 56 57 64 64112 124154 154176 176187 * In consequence of the shortening of the Introduction in this Edition, the intervening pages are cancelled. VI CONTENTS. MR. EYRE'S ANSWER TO THE DESPATCH . THE AGITATION : ITS CAUSES AND CHARACTER MR. BUXTON'S LETTER DISCUSSION IN PARLIAMENT . SUBSEQUENT EVENTS IN THE COLONY DESPATCH OF LORD CARNARVON DISCUSSIONS IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS , OBSERVATIONS OF EARL DERBY AND EARL RUSSELL ON THE COMMISSION, AND COMMENTS THEREON . SPEECHES OF EARL CARNARVON AND EARL RUSSELL ON THE REPORT, AND -COMMENTS THEREON CONTINUANCE OF THE AGITATION, AND ITS CAUSES THE JAMAICA COMMITTEE : ITS COMPOSITION AND CHARACTER THE EYRE DEFENCE AND AID COMMITTEE : ITS CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE .... THE PROGRESS OF PUBLIC OPINION IN FAVOUR OF MR. EYRE, AS INDICATED BY SUBSCRIPTIONS LETTERS AND SPEECHES OF PR.OFESSOR TYNDALL AND OTHERS IN DEFENCE OF MR. EYRE . MR. CARLYLE'S LETTER PROSECUTION OF COLONEL NELSON FOR MURDER . PROSECUTION OF MR. EYRE FOR MURDER . CHARGE OF THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE* THE DEBATE UPON MARTIAL LAW .... OTHER CHARGES AGAINST MR EYRE PROSECUTION OF MR. EYRE THEREON LETTER OF MR. BUXTON AND OTHER LETTERS IT ELICITED CHARGE OF MR. JUSTICE BLACKBURN OBSERVATIONS OF THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE MANIFESTO OF THE JAMAICA COMMITTEE . GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE WHOLE CASE PAGE 207214 215233 233239 240320 320334 361363 368a 3680 368M 368oo 368rr 369 380400 401426 426515 516526 527542 543556 562 565600 600 609640 650 The author desires emphatically to disclaim any intention to make any imputa- tions upon the judicial character of the Lord Chief Justice, though he should have supposed it was hardly necessary for him to do >s<>, since he has repeatedly spoken it with the highest respect. And see note to his name in the Index. PREFACE. THE Jamaica case, for nearly three years, engaged public attention, and, as Mr. Car dwell observes, caused an excite- ment unprecedented in our times. It raised a controversy in which some of the most distinguished men in the- country took opposite sides; it caused debates in Par- liament, and prosecutions in the courts, which have only recently concluded. It was fit that such a case should be the subject of history, and it, is indeed precisely such cases which, after the excitement is over, are the most fitting subjects of calm historical review. In these pages it has been attempted to supply at once a permanent record and an impartial review of the whole case, and to afford the materials for a fair and dispassionate judgment. The Author has taken the statement of the facts, as found by the Commissioners, as the basis of the history, and has only ventured to discuss the inferences to be drawn therefrom, or the conclusions to be founded thereon. But he has felt himself at liberty to interpret their general findings by their more particular findings, and thus to arrive at their real results. If in so doing he shall have presumed to suggest some considerations which may not have occurred to them, or to the other high authorities who may have had to pronounce upon the case, he ventures to think that, after the lapse of time and the advantage of repeated discussions, this may not involve aiiv presumption in him, nor any reflection upon them. And he will add as an excuse, if any were needed, for his presuming to express such opinions that he knows AIll PREFACE. they are entertained by some of the most eminent persons in the kingdom. He most emphatically desires to say of every one that he is sure there has not been any intention to do injustice ;* and, for himself, that his only object has been a sincere desire to promote the cause of justice and of truth. The Author desires to observe that, in the view which he took, (and which has been since confirmed by judicial authority,) the measures necessary for the entire suppres- sion of the rebellion, and the removal of the danger, depended on the real character of the rebellion, and the degree of the danger ; and this, again, turned upon the causes which led to it ; and which, in the Author's view, were deeply rooted, and had their origin in antecedent events, and in the condition and circumstances of the colony for some years past ; and were moreover entirely peculiar to the particular colony in question, and could not possibly apply to any other, making this an excep- tional case, without a possible parallel upon earth. It is obvious, that to do any justice to this view, it was neces- sary to enter at some length into these circumstances, and the previous history of the colony, before coming to the account of the rebellion itself. And this he has endea- voured to do in the Introduction, which has been written with the object of placing the reader as much as possible in the position in which Mr. Eyre was placed when the rebellion broke out ; and to present all the considerations which would naturally occur to his mind at the period during which martial law was maintained. TEMPLE ; 30^ November, 1868. * He especially desires this to be understood of the Lord Chief Justice. INTRODUCTION. The Jamaica case is one of such importance, and has caused so many public proceedings, and has awakened so much public interest, that it is natural that there should be some complete record of it ; and the period has arrived when it may be possible to take a complete and compre- hensive view of it, and to form a dispassionate judgment upon it. Long as it has been before the public, various causes have hitherto operated to prevent this. The excitement caused by the first agitation, with all its gross exaggerations and its monstrous misconceptions, of course only darkened or obscured the subject. On the other hand, when the careful and judicial report of the Commissioners was presented, public interest in it had been almost ex- hausted, especially as it was published at the moment of a change of government ; it attracted little attention, some general phrases in it about " excessive punishments" caught the public mind, and more particular statements were little attended to. And as the Governor was recalled and he alone suffered, the impression was naturally produced, of great excesses, for which he was responsible. The pre- posterous murder prosecutions only distracted attention from the real merits of the case as a whole, and the impres- sion remained until the recent judicial proceedings in the Queen's Bench, when, after two years' consideration, every possible charge was brought against the Governor, and upon careful investigation it was found that at all events there was no such grave culpability as would support a fil charge of any kind. The case was nocessarilv considered, howerer, on that B 11 INTRODUCTION. occasion, with reference only to the responsibility of the Governor and his criminal reponsibility. And the occasion is natural, and it is also favourable, for consideration of the whole case, which has reference to questions of more general importance than even the responsibility of the Governor, whether legal or moral. The charge against him was not for personally directing excesses, for no such personal criminality was ever charged, but for allowing excesses on the part of others. And it concerns the honour and character of this country to consider the extent to which any such excesses were established, and the extent to which if at all the Governor could be deemed morally responsible for them. The learned judge, in directing the grand jury upon the question of criminal culpability, that is to say, a grave degree of culpability, necessarily laid down general principles upon which the question of culpa- bility must depend, viz., that they must look at the case as a whole, that they must endeavour as far as possible to place themselves in the position of the Governor at the time, to see with his eyes, and to hear with his ears, to take the information and the means of judgment presented to his mind, and to try the question by this test, what would a man of ordinary sense think and do under such circum- stances ? This general principle equally applies to moral as well as to legal culpability (which indeed is but a grave degree of moral culpability) and it applies to all others as well as to the Governor. And it concerns the honour and character of this country for humanity, that the degree of excesses committed in a British colony, even on an occasion of great emergency, should not be exaggerated ; as it con- cerns the honour and character of the country for justice that a Governor who has preserved a great colony from a terrible fate should not be sacrificed to such exaggera- tions. The general principle laid down by Mr. Justice Black- burn, that the case must be looked at as a whole, and also as it appeared at the time, and through the medium of the GENERAL PRINCIPLES. ill information, and the apprehensions then present to the mind of those concerned, is one which must commend itself to the mind of any person of common sense or common j ustice. The principle was ably expounded and eloquently enforced by the present Lord Chief Justice of England, when Attorney- General, on the last previous occasion which had arisen, in the case of Ceylon. He, as Attorney- General, the official adviser of the Crown, thus in his place in Parlia- ment delivered his opinion, the question being, it will be observed, as in this present instance, whether martial law had been continued too long, and whether the punishments had been excessively severe. It was, he said, a judicial inquiry : " It was a grave accusation against two public men, charging the one with having caused, the other with having sanctioned and approved, of a reckless sacrifice of human life! It was scarcely possible to conceive a more serious accusation than this, to brand these two public men with the stigma of indelible reproach, and to hold them up to public execration. It was therefore a judicial inquiry. But what do they mean by a judicial inquiry ? Did it not mean that they were to bring to it calm and dis- passionate minds, that it was an inquiry in which political passions ought to have no place, and to exercise no influence ? By a judicial inquiry he understood an inquiry in which every man who was called on to give his vote on the decision, should have taken the utmost pains to master the case and the evidence on which it rested, and should be able to say that he was, not only in point of impartiality, but of information, competent to form an opinion upon the matter in issue." Observe the principle laid down : "They were told that the rigour exercised was excessive. He ad- mitted that it was, if they looked at the amount of punishment only with reference to this particular rebellion. But in considering the question of punishment, it was necessary that the Governor should look at all the surrounding circumstances of the case. They did not punish men simply for the offences they had committed ; they punished them in order to deter others from following their example." (Ibid., p. 227.) The principle was sound and just, and thus he applied it: " Now, what were the circumstances of this case ? It was all very well to talk of this comparatively bloodless rebellion, which they had sup, B 2 [y INTRODUCTION. pressed without difficulty by the troops that were sent to the spot. But let them recollect the spirit of the peeple, their disaffection to the Govern- ment, and all the circumstances connected with the native population of the colony, especially previous rebellions. " (Hansard's Debates, vol. 117.) And then the Attorney- General proceeded to consider the circumstances and some facts in the history of the. colony, especially previous rebellions. Having noticed one as long ago as 1818, he asked: " Has the spirit and affection of the people improved since ? Quite the contrary. Had they any reason to believe that the affection of the people towards the Government was stronger now than ever? Not at all.' 1 (Ibid.) "Was it not the duty of the Governor, with all the experience of the past, when he was considering how far he might extend the prerogative of mercy, to take into consideration all the circumstances in awarding to each party his measure of punishment, to look at the spirit of the people, and the relative dispositions of the people and of the Government." (Ibid., p. 229.) And on that occasion the Attorney- General concluded with these eloquent words, equally applicable in the pre- sent case : " No doubt it was of importance that our colonial policy should be based upon sound and safe principles, but it was also of importance that the House should do justice to the Governor of our distant colonies ; and if there was a case for inquiry, deal fairly with the case, and enter upon any investigation in the spirit of impartiality, fairness, and candour." (vlbid., p. 232.) "It was said, and said truly, that it was essential that these colonies and distant dependencies should be protected against the cruelty and caprice of a governor, but let them take care, while they talked of establishing a control over the colonial policy, that they did not do it at the expense of an innocent m.an let them take care that they did not condemn a man for having done his best under trying cir- cumstances." (Ibid., p. 227.) " The charge under consideration affected the Governor's character in the tenderest point ; for to tell a man that he had been guilty of shedding blood unnecessarily was a charge of a most serious and exaggerated character. As involving a question, not of political principles, but of public character, he said they were bound, as just and generous men, to lose sight of everything except truth, and that great and prominent consideration, the justice they owed to all who wore accused, and upon whom they had to pass judg- ment," (\l>\<}., ! THE NATURE OF THE EMERGENCY. v The Lord Chief Justice then, when Attorney- General, justly and eloquently maintained, when the question was only as to moral responsibility, what his learned brother, Mr. Justice Blackburn, has just laid down as to legal responsibility, that such a case must be looked at as a whole, and with reference to the aspect of things at the time, and as they would present themselves to the minds of those on the spot, with reference to all the surrounding cir- cumstances, and especially to the former history of the colony, and its particular state and condition. And the present premier, Mr. Disraeli, put the question on the same footing when he said that it depended on the nature of the emergency, and whether the measures taken were disproportioned to the emergency. Now what was the exigency in the case of Jamaica ? What was the nature and degree of the danger ? The consideration of a case of this kind must turn mainly upon that. For the measures necessary to meet a danger must be proportioned to the magnitude and nature of the danger to be met and encountered. And what teas the danger ? It was the danger of a negro insurrection, of a war of ex- termination against the white population, in a colony where the disproportion between the races is greater, and the peril therefore is greater, than in any other country on the face of the earth. It was a case, therefore, in its nature extreme, nay, exceptional, nay, entirely peculiar. It was a danger which could not have had any parallel in any other country upon earth. To compare an insurrection of negroes in a colony once a slave colony, with a rebellion of men of British blood, or of any European race would be mere pedantry. To compare it with the worst possible case of a political rebellion would be idle folly. It is a peril wholly exceptional, and the like of which is not to be met with upon earth. And in the case of Jamaica the peril was greater than it could possibly be anywhere else, because the dispro- portion between the numbers of the races was far greater than in any other country. It was a negro rebellion, and VI INTRODUCTION. a negro rebellion with the object of the entire extermina- tion of the whites by means of wholesale massacre, and that in a colony where the blacks are to the whites as thirty to one. A negro rebellion is necessarily, sooner or later, a war of extermination. If not so intended originally, it ulti- mately, unless soon suppressed, must become so through the necessity of fear. The historian truly tells us :- " The insurrection of slaves is the most dreadful of all commotions. The West India negroes exterminate by fire and sword the property and lives of their masters. Universally the strength of the reaction is pro- portioned to the oppression of the weight which is thrown off. Fear is the chief source of cruelty. Men massacre others because they are appre- hensive of death themselves. B evolutions are comparatively bloodless when the influential classes guide the movements of the people, and sedulously abstain from exciting their passions. They are the most terrible of all contests when property is arranged on one side and numbers on the other. The slaves of St. Domingo exceed the atrocities of the Parisian populace." (Alison's History of Europe, vol. i., p. 49.) Jamaica is only one day's sail from St. Domingo, where the horrors of negro insurrections had been realised again and again, and where, by the preponderance of numbers, the blacks had achieved not only emancipation but inde- pendence, and had established a negro state, which has ever since been a standing temptation to the blacks in Jamaica, and a standing terror to the whites. Well may it have been so, for Jamaica is the only negro colony where the number of the negroes at all equals those in St. Domingo, and where the disproportion had even become greater. In St. Domingo as in Jamaica the negroes were near half a million in number, but the whites in the former colony were at least twice as numerous. The case of Jamaica, therefore, was one of far greater peril, the preponderance of numbers being greater ; and the vast colony of St. Domingo was one which had been for more than half a century, for seventy years, the scene of negro insurrections and of negro revolutions, likely to exercise a most dangerous and contagious influence on the enormous CHARACTER OF NEGRO INSURRECTIONS. vii and excitable black population of a colony so near as Jamaica. The history of Hayti was that of a colony which had achieved not only freedom but independence by means of the enormous preponderance of the blacks, and the ruth- less perpetration of repeated massacres of the whites. The historian thus describes the original outbreak of the rebellion in St. Domingo, the only colony which could afford any parallel to the case of Jamaica, and is within a day's sail of it ; and thirty years before this, be it remem- bered, a negro rebellion had broken out in Jamaica, and was not suppressed until hundreds of lives had been sacri- ficed : " This vast conspiracy, productive in the end of calamities unparalleled even in the long catalogue of European atrocity, had for its object the total extirpation of the whites, and the establishment of an independent black government over the island. So inviolable was the secrecy, so general ihe dissimulation of the slaves, that the awful catastrophe was noways apprehended by the European proprietors ; and a conspiracy which embraced nearly the whole negro population was revealed only by the obscure hints of a few faithful domestics. The explosion was sudden and dreadful, beyond anything ever seen before among mankind. In a moment the beautiful plains were covered by fires, while the negroes, like unchained tigers, rushed upon their masters, massacred them without pity, and threw them into the flames." (Alison's History of Europe, vol. viii., p. 172.) And again as to the outbreak in the southern part of the island : " The passions of the negroes were excited by the efforts of a society entitled ' The Society of Friends of the Blacks,' a universal revolution planned and orgjiuised without the slightest suspicion on the part of the planters, and the same night fixed on for its breaking out all over the island. Accordingly, at midnight the insurrection began. In an instant 1400 plantations were in flames, the buildings reduced to ashes, the un- fortunate proprietors hunted down, murdered, or thrown into the flames, by the infuriated negroes. Ere long a hundred thousand negroes were in arms, who committed everywhere the most frightful atrocities. The horrors of a servile war universally appeared. The unchained Africa]) signalised his ingenuity by the discovery of new and unheard of modes of torture. The horrors inflicted on the wom<f the forces ; while it is the duty of the officer in command of the troops to obey such orders as he may receive from the Governor, and to adopt such military measures as may be best calculated to give effect to them." That is to say, that it would be for the Governor, with the advice of the Commander-in-chief, to declare martial law, or determine as to its continuance, but for the military commander to direct its execution, and they did direct it, without any reference to the Governor, and the trials went on entirely under military authority. All that the Governor did, as defined in the despatch, being to give directions that whatever evidence there was against the prisoners should be sent, and that the cases should be care- fullv looked into to see what the evidence was. Whether or not there was evidence sufficient to put them upon their trial the military commander determined, as will appear from the following letter of the Commander-in- chief to the Governor a few days before the amnesty. " I have the honour to bring to the notice of your Excellency that there are now at Up Park Camp seventy-five civil prisoners, sent there for safe custody by the surrounding magistrates and the authorities of Kingston. ' ' Against many of these prisoners there appear to be no charges or evi- dence, nor even documents connected with them in any way. " Where evidence exists courts-martial at once deal with the offenders ; but with regard to the others, I would desire your views as to their dis- posal, their maintenance alone being a great expense to the colony." It did not appear that the Governor had anything to do with their arrest, and the contrary rather appeared, both from the letter and the answer that he knew nothing about them. The Governor replied : ' ' I have the honour to request your Excellency will be good enough to cause me to be furnished with a list of the names of the parties so detained, and a statement in such case of the name of the civil authority from whom or by whose direction they were conveyed to safe custody at Up Park Camp, in order that I may direct inquiries to be made in reference to the prisoners, and tJic grounds of their detention." It would appear, therefore, that the Governor knew nothing of the causes of arrest, and that they had been TRIALS BY COURT-MARTIAL. 37 arrested without his authority. It was after the few ex- ceptional cases already mentioned, and preceding that of Gordon, that he had directed the arrest of any parties and their conveyance into the declared district, and of these cases, the military authorities, on their own judgment, ordered the trial of Gordon, and declined to allow the trial of the others. And, again, on receipt of the list of prisoners remain- ing, the Governor wrote to the Commander-in- chief : " I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of 28th instant, enclosing a list of prisoners confined at Up Park Camp from the 14th to the 28th instant, and beg to state in reply that I will direct in- quiries to be tnade as to wliat evidence is likely to be forthcoming with regard to those prisoners who are not yet disposed of." That is all : he will direct that the evidence, what- ever it may be, shall be ascertained ; and even with reference to the few individuals he had directed to be arrested, as those between whom the remarkable letter already alluded to had passed, he wrote : ' ' I have the honour to acquaint your Excellency that the civil authori- ties have reported to me that all the evidence likely to be available is now collected against the individuals named in the accompanying list and attached to it. *' There is now no reason why the courts-martial should not at once inquire into and dispose of these cases." That is to say, if the military commander thinks proper, the Governor sends all the evidence the civil authorities can collect, leaving it entirely to the military authorities to judge of it. And so a day or two later, the Governor wrote to the Commander-in-chief : " I have the honour to inform your Excellency that the evidence against the prisoners at Up Park Camp, named in the margin, being now com- plete as far as it can be arranged here, but other evidence being said to be available at Morant Bay, I shall be obliged by your directing that they be sent to-morrow morning to Port Royal to be embarked on board a man-of- war for Morant Bay. " It was intended that most of these prisoners should have been tried at Up Park <':mjp, but the gentlemen getting up the evidence have re- 38 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. ported to me late this evening that as some of the prisoners must go to Morant Bay, for further evidence [?] against the different prisoners is so mixed up together, it will be most convenient, and save considerable delay and confusion, to have the whole eleven sent to Morant Bay. " The civil authorities at Kingston will put up the evidence all arranged, and accompanied by some memorandum addressed to Brigadier-General Nelson, and have it delivered in charge of the captain of the man-of-war, together with the prisoners." That is, the Governor was, of course, assenting to the trials going on ; but he took no part in the direction of the trials, either as to the cases to be tried, or the tribunals to try them, still less as to the effect of the evidence, or the result of the proceedings ; and it did not appear that (except in Gordon's case) he ever saw the proceedings in a single case, while, on the other hand, it is abundantly manifest that the Commander-in-chief would have resented or repelled any attempt on the part of the Governor to interfere with a matter which the military commanders deemed one entirely of military cognizance. This is mani- fest from the correspondence already referred to (enclosed in one of the despatches), relative to their refusal to try certain prisoners. That correspondence was as follows : The military com- mander having considered the evidence, did not think it showed complicity in the rebellion, and so wrote not to the Governor, but to the Commander-in-chief, declaring his opinion and seeking his sanction : " I have the honour to request the favour of your informing his Excel- lency the Governor, that having deemed it my duty to refer a case of one of the prisoners sent up for trial, namely, "William Kelly Smith, in order that I might be informed on certain points connected therewith, so that the decision on such case might be my guide as to the disposal of the cases of the prisoners from Her Majesty's ship 'Aboukir,' Dr. Bruce and Mr. Levien, and having just had the honour to receive your opinion on the several points submitted, I have arrived at the decision that on my own responsibility I do not consider myself justified in arraigning these pri- soners before a court-martial. My reason for thus doing so is, these prisoners all uttered the sentiments which are said to be seditious prior to the rebellion, and though I may have the power and authority under martial law (a power to myself very doubtful), yet it is a power I do not TRIALS BY COURT-MARTIAL. 39 feel myself justified in exercising, and which I shall not exert unless I receive positive orders so to do. " The prisoners shall be kept under surveillance till your instructions respecting their disposal be received." Upon which, the Commander-in-chief, without consult- ing the Governor, wrote thus : " I entirely coincide in the opinion of Brigadier-General Nelson. We may have the authority and power, but would not be justified to try the prisoners by a military court-martial." And then this, the decision of the military commander, was sent to the Governor, who, of course, could only acquiesce, and wrote in answer, that he presumed the military commander was satisfied that the evidence did not show complicity in the rebellion, and added : " I have to request your Excellency will be pleased to direct the pri- soners referred to to be detained at Morant Bay until further orders, and that all the papers connected with their respective cases may at once be sent down to me for submission to the Attorney-General, in order that he may report if there are sufficient grounds to take civil proceedings upon. " And a few days afterwards he wrote, desiring their detention upon charges of offences against the ordinary law, as, of course, he would have a right to do : " As martial law is about expiring within a few days, I should be much obliged if your Excellency would cause me to be furnished, with as little delay as possible, with a list of the prisoners at Up Park Camp and at Morant Bay, still detained in custody, but not yet dealt with. " The papers which I requested your Excellency would be good enough to cause to be returned to me from Morant Bay, relative to the prisoners whom Brigadier-General Nelson declined to try by court-martial, have not yet reached me. I should be much obliged by your requesting that they may, if possible, be transmitted to me during the present week, as Sun- day next is the last day of martial law. The prisoners taken up by the civil power, and sent either to Up Park Camp or Morant Bay, I must beg you to order to be kept in custody, under any circumstances, until the Government is in a position to deal with those cases. I take upon myself the entire responsibility of the detention of these persons, although mar- tial law will have expired. I will duly transmit a list of such of the prisoners as the Government considers may be released on the expiry of martial law." 40 HISTORY OP THE JAMAICA CASE. Whether martial law was terminated or not, of course the prisoners would be amenable to ordinary law. On the llth November, less than a month from the time when martial law was declared, martial law virtually ceased; and since the amnesty a fortnight earlier, the more hasty and perilous part of martial law, military execution with- out trial, had entirely ceased. Indeed, as already indicated, that took place only during the first few days of martial law, under the influence of the first feelings of alarm, excite- ment, and horror caused by the massacre. After that time death was only inflicted upon trial by court-martial, entirely under military control and military authority. From the above documents, it will abundantly appear that while the Governor with the advice of the Commander- in-chief allowed the continued execution of martial law, the military commanders directed its execution. It is further manifest that the Governor in allowing the continuance of martial law upon the evidence of the military commander, did so with reference to the condition of the entire island, and not merely the district which had been the scene of actual insur- rection ; and that he acted upon the belief that there was a widespread rebellion, the outbreak of which could only be prevented either by the terror of martial law, or by the dis- tribution of military force ; and that so soon as the military reinforcement arrived, and were distributed, he terminated the operation of martial law, the whole island continuing still in a most critical state, and requiring the presence of the military in every part of it to preserve the peace and give confidence to the peaceably disposed. It will have abundantly appeared to those who have made themselves acquainted with the authorities upon the subject, that it must have been manifest to any competent and impartial lawyer, that all that had taken place, so far as it had been authorized by the Governor, or, so far as appeared, by the military commanders, was legal : or, at all events, could not possibly involve any criminal RESULTS OF THE DESPATCHES. 41 responsibility. As to the Governor, he had only declared martial law under a local Act of Parliament, with the concur- rence of his counsel, and the advice of his Attorney- General, his Chief Justice, and his Commander-in-chief, and he had after that neither done nor directed anything beyond some general directions as to movements of troops, and some general suggestions to " cut off and capture the rebels," except in ordering the arrest of a few persons, only one of whom was tried. It did not appear that, with that exception, he gave any particular orders or directions, that he ordered a single execution, or even directed a single trial, nor a single act of punishment, nor, except in Gordon's case, ever saw the proceedings of a single trial. And it further appeared, that he could not possibly have had anything to do with the acts of the military at distant places, of which he could only know afterwards by means of reports, which reports were sent not to him, but to the Commander-in-chief, and only came to him for the pur- pose of being enclosed in despatches to the Secretary of State ; and that even supposing who, on careful perusal, there might seem some ground to suspect that there had been some excesses ; it not only did not appear that he was or could be legally responsible for them, but it plainly appeared that he could not possibly be. And then as to the military commander to whom the officers reported, and whose duty it would be if they saw any impropriety to censure or disapprove, they did not appear to have observed anything calling for reprehension. Nay, more. The reports went to the Secretary-at-War, and he did not appear to have observed anything calling for reprehension, at all events not in the reports of the regular officers. It was upon a careful perusal of the reports, that in one or two instances expressions were observed which appeared to denote a want of due sobriety of judgment, and the presence of some excitement of feel- ing which might easily be accounted for by the circum- 42 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. stances of the colony. And even if there had been any isolated instances of excess, it did not appear that they had been in accordance with any order issued by the military commander, and they would be the acts at the utmost of the officers on the spot; and it did not even appear that they were in all cases under orders of the officers, so that they would be the acts only of the actual perpetrators, as indeed was apparent in some cases. Upon the whole, therefore, to the mind of any competent and impartial lawyer, there would not and did not appear any reason to doubt the substantial legality of the measures taken, that is, so far as they had been under any orders or directions from superior authority ; and though a care- ful and critical perusal of the report might suggest a suspicion for some excesses and ground for some inquiry, there would appear no ground whatever for imputing any criminal liability nor even illegality to the Governor or military commander. Accordingly these despatches and enclosures, when received by the Secretary of State, did not appear to make upon his mind the impression of any illegality or culpa- bility on the part of the Governor or military commander ; on the contrary, although he intimated a desire for some explanation from the officers, whose reports were enclosed, the Secretary of State spoke of the conduct of the Governor and commander in terms of commendation, and had the can- dour to acknowledge what the dates seemingly abundantly made manifest, that it was obvious the Governor had not had time to make himself master of the contents ; and it was evident it never entered into his mind that the Governor could be deemed responsible for the acts disclosed. "When the first and principal despatch arrived containing the substance of what had taken place, and fully disclosing the declaration and execution of martial law, he wrote this in answer : " By the mail from the "West Indies, the arrival of which did not take place till yesterday, I have received your despatch of the 20th October SECRETARY OF STATED DESPATCHES. 43 last, reporting the breaking out of a rebellion of the negroes in the eastern districts of Jamaica, which has involved the cruel massacre of many of the principal white and coloured persons in that part of the island, and acquainting^ e with the measures which, in concert with the officers in command of Her Majesty's military and naval forces, you have taken to suppress the insurrection, and to prevent its spreading to other parts of the island. "I have been greatly shocked at the barbarities which you describe, and I wish you, in the first place, to inform the inhabitants of Jamaica how deeply Her Majesty's Government deplore the losses which the colony in general has sustained, and how sincerely they sympathise with those who have to lament family bereavements incurred under circumstances so distressing. I have next to convey to you my high approval of the spirit, energy, and judgment with which you have acted in your measures for repressing and preventing the spread of the insurrection. It was the first duty of your Government to take, as you did, effectual measures for the suppression of this horrible rebellion, and I congratulate you on the rapid success by which those measures appear to have been attended. Time lias not sufficed for any adequate examination of the reports which you have been able to send me by this mail; and no doubt you will have much further intelligence to communicate to me hereafter on the subject of the measures of severity to which you have felt it to be necessary to have recourse. If you had time in forwarding those enclosures to make yourself acquainted with all their contents, it will have been evident to you that they contain many passages which will require to be explained as soon as there shall be sufficient leisure for the writers to explain fully the proceedings to which they relate. In the meantime I rely on your high character, and on the character of the officers by whose efficient aid you have repressed rebellion and restored safety, and receive with much satisfaction your assurance that these measures will prove to have been a merciful substitute for the much larger measure of punishment which would have had to be executed had the rebellion been aUowed time to gather head and extend itself. I entirely agree with you that measures of severity, when dictated by necessity and justice, are in reality measures of mercy, and do not doubt it will appear that you have arrested the course of punishment as soon as you were able to do so, and have exerted yourself to confine it meanwhile to ascertained offenders and to cases of aggravated guilt. I observe with pleasure the hope you express, that if no further outbreak occurs, you will, in a short time, have been able to proclaim a general amnesty, except -to actual murderers." It is important to observe that though the case of Gordon was fully disclosed, it did not appear to have sug- gested to the Secretary of State any idea of illegality, and it was not mentioned in the first despatches. 44 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. In the next despatch, written a week afterwards, when explanation was asked as to some passages in the reports of the officer enclosed in the despatch, the Secretary of State evidently treated the matters they disclosed as the acts of the officers, and addressed himself to the Governor not as in any degree responsible for them, but only as the proper authority to demand explanation of them from the officers, the writers of the reports. And the same tone of candid consideration was extended even to them : "I avail myself of the sailing of the 'Constance' frigate to address you on the subject of those enclosures in your despatch of the 20th of October to which I referred in my last despatch as requiring explanation, but which there was not time adequately to examine during the brief interval of the mail. " I rely on the assurances conveyed to me in your despatch, and do not doubt that no time will have been lost in checking at the earliest possible moment those measures of instant severity which only an overwhelming sense of public danger justifies, and in returning to the ordinary course of legal inquiry, and of the judicial trial and punishment of offenders. It remains, therefore, now to examine the statements contained in those enclosures ; and in doing so / shall bear in mind the pressure under which they were written, and the great probability that much remains to be said in those cases which, so far as they are yet before me, require explanation ; cases in which, without such explanation, the severity inflicted would not appear to have been justifiable. In calmly reviewing, when the danger is believed to be over, all the occurrences of an outbreak in which the spread of the insurrection over the whole island was apprehended, with the 'mas- sacre of all the principal inhabitants, great allowance must be made for acts which have resulted from that apprehension. Her Majesty's Govern- ment will not fail to bear this consideration in mind in the judgment which they will ultimately form upon all the circumstances of the present case. I have to request that you will furnish me with copies of the pro- ceedings of the courts-martial, and of the evidence taken in the several cases. These documents are referred to in your despatch and the enclosures, but it was no doubt impossible that you should have been prepared to for- ward them by the last mail. " On the case of Mr. Gordon I have addressed you in a separate des- patch." The despatch enclosed several passages from reports of the officers which appeared to require explanation, and SECRETARY OF STATED DESPATCHES. 45 indicated that they had, during the last few days, amidst the horror and excitement caused by the massacre and the natural feelings of indignation it had excited, acted, somewhat rashly, on a supposed application of the principle of the common law, that persons flying from apprehension are liable to be killed ; and had in some instances allowed them even to shoot negroes without sufficient care to see that they were rebels, or had been concerned in the insurrection. In a separate despatch, in which the Secretary of State treated of Gordon's case, he did not notice the Governor's distinct statement, that the execution was necessary in order to put down the rebellion, and had evidently been misled upon two points of law : " I wish to know whether your approval of Gordon's execution rested on evidence of his participation in the insurrection itself, or the actual resist- ance of authority out of which it arose, or, as your letter to Major-General O'Connor might give occasion to suppose, on evidence of the lesser offence of using seditions and inflammatory language, calculated indeed to produce resistance to authority and rebellion, but without proof of any deliberate design of producing that result. " It is matter of obvious remark that Gordon was arrested at Kingston, to which martial law did not extend, and taken to Morant Bay for trial, under martial law. Her Majesty's Government await with much anxiety your explanation on this subject. " I desire also to see it clearly established that he was not executed until crimes had been proved in evidence against him which deserved death ; and that the prompt infliction of capital punishment was necessary to rescue the colony from imminent danger, and from the horrors of a general or widespread insurrection, and the repetition elsewhere of such a slaughter of the white and coloured colonists as had taken place in the eastern part of the island." The Secretary of State here indicated the presence -of those mistakes in point of law from which the whole clamour as to Gordon's case proceeded. He was evidently under the impression that express or actual evidence of an intention to incite to insurrection would be necessary, even in a case where the language shown to have been 46 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. used was calculated to have that effect, whereas the use of such language itself is abundant evidence of such an in- tention, seeing that men must be taken to intend the natural consequence of their acts and words, and a man cannot be allowed to pretend that he alone is ignorant of the effect his language is calculated to produce. In the next place the Secretary of State evidently was under the impression that a person who had incited to, or taken part in, a rebellion, was not liable to martial law if he took care to keep out of the district where it prevailed, whereas, martial law, like any other law, applies to all offences committed or caused within the field of its operation, the locality of trial depending in all cases on the locality of the crime, not that of the person; and the exercise of martial law consisting not in mere arrest, which might take place at common law, but in the summary trial and execution, which no doubt could only take place in the district under martial law. The language of the Secretary of State evidently implied an impression that when a man is arrested out of the district, to be taken into it, martial law was exercised out of the district. But that was a complete mistake. Any one can be arrested for sedition or treason, at common law, and being arrested, the proper course is to take him to the district where he is liable to be tried, which is the district where he did or caused the evil of which he is accused. And if that district is under martial law, he can be tried by martial law ; and when he is so tried, and not until then, martial law is exercised. So that it was a fallacy to suppose that martial law had been exercised out of the district. And even if it had been, as the whole island could have been declared and it would have been only another stroke of the pen, the point was purely technical, even if there was anything in it, provided that the man was really guilty, and his death was really necessary, or at all events appeared to be so at the time. And hence the Secretarv of State in each case SECRETARY OF STATERS INQUIRIES. 47 put that as the substantial point. And it is to be borne in mind that at the time that evidence in Gordon's case had not arrived, and the Secretary of State had evidently overlooked the passage in the Governor's letter in which he distinctly stated that the execution was necessary, and that it would be in vain to hope to put down the insur- rection if the author was allowed to enjoy impunity. The misconception which prevailed upon these points caused the subsequent agitation upon the case. In another despatch the Secretary of State addressed to the Governor a number of specific and searching inquiries as to the execution of martial law, the answer to which would have furnished all the information necessary to arrive at a judgment upon the subject. It will be seen that the very nature and terms of these inquiries on the other hand, directed as they were to the manner in which martial law had been executed, and the rules by which it had been regulated, rather implied the legality of its execution, and were pointed to the question of its propriety or the exercise of due and proper control over it. The despatch was in these terms : " In reference not only to the particular reports adverted to in this and in my former despatch, but to the proceedings generally, I am desirous to point to the main topics which, in the opinion of Her Majesty's Govern- ment, demand your report : "1. The number of persons tried, and of those sentenced by courts- martial, specifying the charge and sentence, and whether or not the sen- tence was executed, and under whose authority, and whether minutes were taken of the evidence on which the sentence was founded in each case ; all minutes of evidence so taken to be appended to the return. The return should show also at what places and times respectively the offences were charged to have been committed, and the accused persons were arrested, or captured, and tried, specifying in each case whether the offence was committed before or during martial law, whether the arrest or capture was made during martial law, and in a place to which martial law extended ; and if the person accused was arrested or captured in a place to which martial law did not extend, and removed to a place to which it did extend, there to be tried by martial law, and for an offence not committed during and under martial law, it should be stated by whose 48 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. authority this was done, and whether under the advice of the Attorney- General of Jamaica. " 2. "Whether any persons were hanged, floggad, or otherwise punished without trial, and if so, by whom and under whose authority in each case, specifying the name, sex, colour, and quality of the person punished, the nature and date of the punishment, the nature and date of the offence, and the grounds on which it was assumed to have been com- mitted. "3. The number of persons, so far as can be ascertained, who were shot in the field or in the bush, their names, sex, quality, and colour, and whether adults or children, specifying in all cases whether they were resisting or flying, whether armed or unarmed, and if armed, "with what weapons, whether such as are used only for purposes of offence, or such as are used also in agricultural or other peaceful occupations. " 4. Whether any and what oral or written instructions were given to officers in command of detachments sent in pursuit of rebels, whereby they might know on what evidence or appearances, other than hostile action or attitude, they were to assume that those they might meet with were rebels ; and whether those officers, or any of them, were led by their in- structions, or otherwise, and without authority induced to assume that all persons flying or hiding from pursuit, or all persons found with plunder, or all persons leaving their labour on plantations, were to be regarded as rebels and shot when met with. Copies of all written instructions should be furnished. " The Governor, in answer to these demands for explana- tion, wrote to the effect, that while the general arrange- ments for the suppression of the rebellion were made under his direction, all the internal management of the district under martial law was under military direction, and, in short, that he had only authorised martial law, and that its actual execution was entirely under the military com- manders ; that when he wrote his despatches he had only a general knowledge of the matter, and that he had hitherto had no time to make particular inquiries. "With regard to the various letters which accompanied my despatch and to certain passages in them which you say call for further explana- tion and justification, I have to remark that whilst all the general arrangements for the suppression and punishment of the rebellion were made under my own immediate direction, the subordinate details and the internal management of the districts under martial law, including the ANSWERS OF THE GOVERNOR. 49 appointment of courts-martial, the trial of prisoners, the approval of sentences, and the carrying out of such sentences, vested entirely with the military authorities, were reported to the General in command, and only partially came under my notice in a fjeneral manner through the letters to which you refer. Many of these letters I only obtained a hurried glance at when overwhelmed with the labour and anxiety of the most pressing events ; and although copies were eventually furnished to me, most of these only reached me just in time to be appended to my despatch without my being enabled to have other copies made for my own use. "After despatching the October mails, the thought, work, and anxiety entailed in arranging for the safety and protection of the western district of the colony absorbed my attention from a very early hour in the morning to a very late one at night, and even during the few brief hours that I attempted to obtain rest there was rarely a night during which I was not called up at all hours, one, two, or three times, by expresses from one place or another, requiring me to get up at once and reply to or givo directions connected with such communications. Added to this was the ordinary work of the colony, the correspondence with the subordinate Governments, and the preparation for the current work of a most impor- tant legislative session. ' ' I mention these particulars only to show the pressure that was upon me (a pressure which has seriously affected my health), and how impossible it was for me to scrutinise or investigate carefully the details of the enor- mous mass of papers which Avere continually coming before me. As regards those connected with the rebellion, my desire was to place you in posses- sion of the fullest and most complete information with the least possible delay, and in order to effect this I was often obliged to transmit documents which had been but hastily glanced at without analysing or reporting upon them, and without retaining copies. I 'will now endeavour to procure such copies and read through the correspondence with the view of calling for fuller information upon such points as seem to require explanation or justi- fication ; but I should also be obliged by your causing me to be informed of the particulars in regard to which you desire further reports, so that nothing may be omitted which it is in my power to do to place all the cir- cumstances in a clear manner before you. " It is very probable that some occurrences may have taken place which cannot be justified during the prevalence of martial law, and where so much was necessarily left to the discretion of, or where an unforeseen responsi- bility was by circumstances forced upon, subordinate authorities, differing greatly in character, ability, temper, experience, and judgment. Such cases can only be sincerely deplored. It would have been impossible, under the excitement and urgency of the circumstances attending the outbreak, to have either guarded against or prevented their taking place. It must be remembered, too, that the threatening accounts received from he other districts of the colony, and the limited means of meeting any E 50 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. difficulties which might arise there, made it a matter of simple' se7f -defence that the outbreak in the east should both be put down with the least pos- sible delay and be punished in the most summary manner. The safety, in fact the preservation, of the colony made this imperative. ' ' As regards the general features of and mode of carrying out the retri- bution which was so necessarily and justly dealt to those who were prin- cipals in this most cruel and unprovoked insurrection, I do not doubt but that ample justification will be forthcoming by the officers under whose immediate directions and supervision it took place. Those officers were Major- General O'Connor in Kingston, Brigadier-General Nelson in the districts east of Morant Bay, and Colonel Hobbs in the district north-west of Morant Bay. The high rank and character of all these officers is, I think, a full guarantee that nothing improper or unjust took place with their knowledge or sanction ; and I do not doubt but that they will be ready and able to afford full explanation and justification upon any points which, without such further information, may at present seem unsatisfactory. " If I recollect aright there was in one of Colonel Hobbs' own letters a statement to the effect that having some prisoners whom he could not take with him, he had found it necessary to shoot them. I presume this implies after trial by court-martial, and either upon their being taken in arms against the Queen, or upon direct testimony of their complicity in the rebellion. It must be remembered that the military officers in the field wrote under great disadvantages, and when worn out in body and mind by the fatigues and anxieties of the day. Under such conditions their reports could scarcely be expected to contain all the details which it is desirable to know. " In this despatch it will be seen the Governor, in exact accordance, it is considered, with the authorities on the subject, avowed his having sanctioned martial law as a measure of social self-defence, on the ground of the neces- sity for speedy measures of a deterrent character, and the summary infliction of punishment upon the rebels by military executions ; and that the military authorities considered that not only those were liable to military execution under martial law who were actually taken in arms, but who were clearly proved to have been in arms, or to have taken part in the rebellion. In another des- patch he thus vindicated this view, upon the ground of necessity for the general safety of the community : " A very serious rebellion had broken out, and was rapidly spreading in the eastern part of the island, a considerable portion of the troops in the ANSWERS OF THE GOVERNOR. 51 colony had been called into the field, and the entire force in Jamaica would barely be able to cope with the then existing rebellion, and protect the principal towns of Kingston and Spanish Town. " If the rebellion broke out simultaneously in any other quarter, as there was every reason to fear might be the case, there would have been little hope of coping with it effectually, and it was clear that under any circum- stances whatever a large augmentation of troops would be necessary in Jamaica for some time to come. " Long previous to the rebellion breaking out in Morant Bay, Govern- ment had good reason to believe that a spirit of disaffection and disloyalty pervaded very many of the parishes ; and as far back as August last I had occasion to bring to your notice that I had been obliged to send down a ship of war to certain parts to watch events and be prepared for any emergency. " The actual rising of the negro population took place at a different point of the island, and it rapidly extended from that point along the coast line of the eastern end of the island for some fifty miles, until headed and turned by the landing of troops at Port Antonio. " It was also at the same time spreading to the north-west, up the line of the Blue Mountain valley, until checked by meeting the troops detached from Newcastle to intercept its progress. " It is scarcely necessary to point out that the negro i a creature of impulse and imitation, easily misled, very excitable, and a perfect fiend when under the influence of an excitement which stirs up all the evil passions of a race, little removed in many respects from absolute savages. " Under these conditions, and knowing the insecure and unprotected state of the entire colony, and the small force available for our defence in the event of any general rising taking place simultaneously, it became a matter of absolute necessity and self-defence, not only promptly to put down the outbreak, but by proclaiming martial law in the districts where it existed and contiguous thereto, to ensure that the punishment inflicted should be summary and severe. "It was necessary to make an example Avhich, by striking terror, might deter other districts from following the horrible example of St. Thomas-in-the-East. ' ' In the long run, and viewed as a whole, any amount of just severity thus exercised became a mercy, and the exaction of the last penalty for rebellion from the few has in all human probability saved the lives of the" many, as well as relieved the colony and Great Britain from a long, pro- tracted, bloody, and expensive strife ; for it must be remembered that in an extensive, thinly populated, and mountainous country like Jamaica, without roads or means of traversing the mountain fastnesses, the sub- duing of a general rebellion would be no easy or short task. " All the general arrangements, as narrated in my despatch No. 251, of E 2 52 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. the 20th of October, were, directed by myself personally, and for them I alone am responsible. ' ' The subordinate arrangements and details with regard to the internal management of the districts under martial law, were, of course, in the hands of military authorities, whose reports, so far as they have reached me, I have duly transmitted to you. " It is, perhaps, impossible when a country is under martial law, im- posed on account of scenes of violenc-3, plundering of properties, burnings of houses, and cruel butcheries, and when there is little time for that cool and careful investigation which takes place under more favourable cir- cumstances, but that some occurrences must ensue which are to bo deplored, and under which individuals may possibly suffer unjustly. ' ' But taken as a whole, and bearing in mind both the vastness of the danger and the small means of meeting it, I do not consider that the punishment has been greater than the crime merited, or than was neces- sary to prevent a recurrence of it. " I have a perfect conviction in my own mind, after an experience of four years in Jamaica, and with the best and most varied means of obtain- ing information, that this colony has had a most narrow escape from universal anarchy and tumult, and that this escape is due solely to the promptness and decision of action by which the first outbreak of rebellion was put down and punished." And in particular regard to the execution of military law by court-martial, the Governor acted entirely on the ground of necessity, as a deterrent measure, in order to secure a speedy and exemplary administration of justice. ' ' On reviewing the acts of the military and naval authorities in dealing with any rebels who were found in arms or in summarily disposing (after trial by court-martial) of those who were taken prisoners, it is necessary to bear in mind that there were no prisons or gaols to which to send prisoners, and that some 500 men were engaged in quelling a rebellion in districts (St. David, St. Thomas-in-the-East, and Portland) tenanted by a popu- lation of some 40,000, and comprising upwards of 500 square miles of country. Nor must it be forgotten that nearly the whole of this population, if not in actual rebellion, was sympathising with the rebels, and taking no steps to arrest its progress or aid the authorities. It was impossible, under such circumstances, that they could either take charge of and guard any large number of prisoners, or make long delays to institute more formal trials. The administration of summary justice became a necessity, and any hesitation would have been fatal to the success of the military operations. " GROSS EXAGGERATIONS. 53 In the meantime, however, before the answers of the Governor were received, the Secretary of State had received some monstrous and exaggerated statements, which had reached him, through the Admiralty, from the Commodore on the station statements which proved the chief material for popular agitation which was excited, and no doubt, coupled with the passages in the reports of one or two of the officers, were the main grounds on which a commission for inquiry into the execution of martial law, without waiting for the explanations of the officers, was soon afterwards resolved upon. And it is of importance to see that the inquiry was resolved upon under the influence of erroneous ideas as to the law, and false, monstrous, and exaggerated notions as to the facts. The Secretary of State wrote : "I enclose a copy of a letter from the Admiralty, with a copy of a despatch from Commodore Sir Leopold M'Clintock, dated the 8th No- vember. This officer states that it will be impossible to ascertain the total loss of life in the insurrection, but that 1,500 would perhaps be a moderate computation ; that, at the date of his letter, arrests were being daily made, and the. prisoners sent to Morant Bay, and a large proportion of them hanged." This, however, was only a mild version of what the Commodore wrote, whose despatch, in which he stated that he only arrived on the 31st October, so that he could know nothing of the matter except from mere hearsay, and his own officers who had been actually engaged in the repression of the rebellion, and whose reports were enclosed, gave no colour of support to these monstrous statements. The Commodore wrote : " The insurrection has been completely quelled. / am informed that no white people were assaulted subsequent to the first fearful outrage on the llth ultimo ; and the following day, at Golden Grove, about 300 persons had been hanged, 'and at least 800 were shot,' chiefly by the Maroons, who entered with fierce zeal into the bush-hunt after rebel negroes. Arrests were daily being made. The prisoners are generally sent to Morant Bay for trial, and l:irg> proportion of them are hangM. It will be -mpossible 54 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. over to ascertain the total loss of life, but 1,500 would be a moderate compu- tation." (Sir L. M'Clintock's Despatch, November 8.) Now, this was written only three days before the actual cessation of martial law, and therefore at a time when the total number of executions was pretty well known to the military commanders, and might have been known to the naval commanders, as some of the naval officers were actually engaged in the courts-martial, and the reports of the latter, as already mentioned, gave no colour to the monstrous statements which formed the material for the subsequent operation. And it was not only the Commodore who was thus writing against the Governor ; the Commander-in-chief, under whose orders and authority martial law was exercised, and whose controversy with the Governor as to the dis- posal of the military was pending, wrote at the same time to the Secretary-at-War in these terms : ' ' The gaols were crowded with political prisoners and rebels handed over by the civil authorities captured in districts not under martial law, but whom the Governor desired might be tried by court-martial. " (General O'Connor to the Secretary-at-War, Nov. 7.) It will have been seen that the Governor, in truth, had not desired that* any prisoners should be tried by court- martial, unless there was sufficient evidence in the opinion of the military commanders of complicity in the rebellion, and that in a correspondence between him and the Com- mander-in-chief it had distinctly appeared that this was so, and that the military commanders, and they alone, determined who should be tried, and that the Governor merely directed the evidence to be sent to him. First im- pressions, however, are hard to be eradicated, and the impression caused by these letters of the naval and military commanders, written behind his back to the authorities at home, must of course have been most prejudicial to the unfortunate Governor, who at that very time was engaged in a controversy with the military commander as to the MISCONCEPTIONS AS TO THE LAW. 55 distribution of military force, with a view to the termina- tion of martial law. It further appeared from the despatches of the Secretary of State that the reports of the officers went not to the Governor, but to the Commander-in-chief of the colony, and from him to the Secretary of War ; and that it was only in some instances that the Governor ever received copies to enclose in his despatches to the Secretary for the Colonies, for the latter had actually to send to the Gover- nor extracts of reports obtained from the Secretary of War, with a view to the necessary explanations, and the Secretary of State wrote thus : " I enclose extracts from a report made by Lieutenant Adcock and trans- mitted to Lord de Grey in a despatch of General O'Connor." So that it appeared on the face of the despatches of the Secretary of State that the Governor had not had, and could not have had knowledge of the matters on which ex- planation was required, until the very time when the explanations were required. These reports, however, contained one or two passages which showed that during the first excitement one or two of the officers had not preserved a cool head, and which were easily used for the purpose of exciting a prejudice against the whole execution of martial law. Concurrently with these matters of prejudice, and these misrepresenta- tions of fact, there were serious misconceptions as to the law. A view of the law was loudly and widely proclaimed upon which martial law would be illegal, and the Governor and the officers would be guilty of murder. Premises were laid down whence that conclusion would necessarily follow. It was argued, in effect, that martial law was illegal in any other sense than resistance to actual insurrection, or that, at all events, it was only limited to such measures as a jury might consider necessary ; that any act a jury might hold to be unnecessary was illegal, and that, being 56 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. illegal, it was, if an act of homicide, necessarily murder. In support of this view an opinion was procured from two eminent counsel, and which was made use of and after- wards published, to this effect : "Martial law is the assumption of the officers of the absolute power exercised by military force for the suppression of insurrection and the restoration of order and lawful authority. The officers of the Crown are justified in the exercise of force, and the destruction of life and property to any extent that may be required for the purpose. But they are not justified in inflicting punishment after resistance is suppressed, and after the courts can be re-opened. And courts-martial, by which martial law, in this sense of the word, is admiHistered, are not, properly speaking, courts- martial, or courts at all, but are mere committees formed for the purpose of carrying into execution the extraordinary power assumed by the Government. " And therefore, the opinion went on to expound, having no authority, and their sentences being wholly illegal, those who pronounced them and carried them out would have to justify themselves before a jury, and show the necessity of the executions or punishments for the suppres- sion of the rebellion, and that, not generally, but particu- larly, of each and every execution or punishment inflicted ; so that, if in the judgment of a jury any one execution was not " necessary," it would be unjustifiable and illegal. The writers of the opinion declared that in the facts dis- closed in the despatch they could see no such justification, and they pronounced positively that, as a matter of law, an illegal homicide would be murder. They showed that any one privy to it would be liable for it. They pointed out further that, by the late Criminal Law Consolidation Act, any one who had committed a murder in any part of the British dominions could be tried in this country ; and the clear result of their opinion was, that the Governor and military commander who sanctioned the trial of any one executed for complicity in the rebellion, and the court-martial who may have sat upon the case, would be guilty of murder if a jury should be brought to think the COMMISSION OF INQUIRY. 57 execution not strictly necessary, that is to say, a jury in this country, many thousands of miles away from the colony, and entirely unacquainted with its condition and circum- stances, with which they could only be very imperfectly made acquainted by the means of evidence, and a jury also in a country which was being influenced and prejudiced to the utmost by the most monstrous misrepresentations and the most inflammatory popular appeals, so as to render justice absolutely impossible. The effect of these misrepresentations as to the facts and this misconception as to the law was to excite an agita- tion against the Governor and military commanders, under the influence of which the Government, probably as much for the sake of the objects of it as for any other cause, and to allow time for the agitation to subside and for good sense to regain its ascendency, resolved to issue a commission of inquiry into the nature of the disturbances, and the measures taken for their suppression ; that is, with a view to ascertain how far the disturbances were rebellious, so as to justify martial law, and in what manner martial law had been exercised. On the 30th December, 1865, before the answer of the officers could be received, the commission issued. It was directed to Sir Henry Storks, Governor of Malta ; Mr. Russell Gurney, Recorder of London ; and Mr. Maule, Recorder of Leeds. It ran thus : "Whereas it is alleged that great disaffection hath prevailed in our said island, and that sundry evil-disposed persons have concerted the destruc- tion of other of our subjects resident therein : and whereas grievous disturbances have broken out in our said island, and have been suppressed, and the said disturbances and suppression have been attended with great loss of life, and it is alleged that excessive and unlawful severity has been used in the course of such suppression : and whereas it greatly concerns us that full and impartial inquiry should be made into the origin, nature, and circumstances of the said disturbances, and with respect to the measures adopted in the course of their suppression : and whereas it is requisite for the sufficiency of the said inquiry that it should be conducted by persons not having borne part in the government of our said island during the 58 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. existence of the said disturbances nor in the suppression thereof, Now know ye that we, reposing especial trust and confidence in the loyalty and fidelity of you, the said Sir Henry Knight Storks, Russell Gurney, and John Blossett Maule, have constituted and appointed you to be our Com- missioners for the purpose of making such inquiry as aforesaid ; and we do authorize and require you, with all convenient despatch, and by all lawful ways and means, to enter upon such inquiry, and, jointly or severally, to collect evidence in our said island respecting the origin, nature, and circumstances of the said disturbances, and respecting the means adopted in the course of the suppression of the same, and respecting the con- cerned in such disturbances or suppression, and we do require you to com- municate to us through one of ^ the principal Secretaries of State, as well as the evidence as any opinions which you may think fit to express there- upon. And we do further require that you do in all things conform to such instructions as shall be addressed to you by us through one of our principal Secretaries of State : and we do strictly charge and command all our officers, civil and military, and all our faithful subjects, and all others inhabiting the said island and the territories depending thereon, that in their several places and according to their respective powers and opportunities they be aiding to you in the execution of this our com- mission. " As regards the composition of the Commission it will be seen that, composed, as it was, chiefly of lawyers accus- tomed to the strict administration of criminal law in our courts, and so naturally prejudiced against sum- mary executions by mere military power, it was not likely to be favourable to the exercise of martial law ; it would be predisposed to take a somewhat adverse view of the subject, and any views it might take, either as to the necessity for martial law, or as to the propriety of its execution, might be safely relied upon as the results of strong conviction and a victory of truth over prejudice ; while, on the other hand, any opinions upon the exercise or continuance of martial law, resting so much necessarily on military considerations, would hardly have the authority derived from previous practical acquaintance with the subject. As to the powers of the Commission, its terms enabled it to demand and obtain from the local legislature, an Act empowering it to administer an oath ; and, on the THE INQUIRY BY THE COMMISSIONERS. 59 other hand, its very nature as a royal commission, and the terms by which the civil and military servants of the Crown were called upon to aid the execution of the Com- mission, virtually made it incumbent upon them to be examined. And although the Commissioners gave a caution to the witnesses that they need not criminate themselves, this was, as regards the military officers, entirely nugatory, and practically as regards them, at all events, the inquiry was compulsory and adverse. And although the Commissioners, evidently aware that criminal prosecutions might be instituted, went through the form of giving to the officers the usual caution not to criminate themselves, the caution, as it must have been known, could in their case only be a form ; and as counsel attended, for the promoters of prosecutions, and were allowed to put or suggest hostile questions, the practical result was this, that the men who had saved a colony from a dangerous insurrection were subjected to a compulsory examination before a royal commission, so as to extract admissions from them for the purpose of criminal prosecution. The military commander and officers were examined in the most stringent manner as to all that they had directed or allowed in the execution of martial law; every case known of wae strictly investigated ; and as on the one hand every one who had any instance to adduce was invited to come forward, and. the relatives of those who had been executed would of course naturally come forward with the strongest feelings, aid on the other hand the officers could only state in justifi- cition such acts as were legal evidence, the number of apparent excesses must have been made as large as possible. $o instance was likely to escape, and the entire number of jsiecutions or punishments ascertained could be relied on as accurate. As regards the total number, it appeared thit there had been the grossest exaggeration, and that tht Commission had been obtained by the most monstrous 60 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE, misstateinent of the facts. Instead of 1,500 or 2,000 persons having been immolated for a mere riot, which was the case strenuously maintained by those who demanded inquiry, it appeared that 432 persons had been executed in suppression of a very formidable rebellion. Such was the general result of the inquiry, while on the other hand, no doubt, some amount of excess was shown, and in a certain number of cases in which as no sufficient justifi- cation was shown, there appeared to have been some degree of rashness, more or less culpable according to the circumstances. And, as already mentioned, these rash acts in the pur- suit and punishment of supposed rebels only took place during the excitement of the first few days after the mas- sacre ; and then, for the most part, executions only took place by sentence of court-martial, as to which there appeared no reason to believe there was any wilful in- justice, though in some instances there was a want of suffi- cient evidence. The important point, however, was as to the responsi- bility of the Governor and superior officers. As to the Governor, it not only did not appear that he had taken any part in the execution of martial law, but it appeared that he did not and could not give any orders or directions in the declared district, and that military authority vas supreme. As to the matter of -right, the Attorney- General of the colony stated it as his opinion : " The Governor makes the requisition for troops, and the General carr.es it out in detail. I am of opinion that the Governor was the suprene authority during martial law my opinion is, that as soon as the Governor gave orders to the General to go to the proclaimed districts, the Governor wifj relieved of the personal responsibility, and that he handed over the district in question to the military. I regard the General in the field as being tl supreme military authority." And although the Comniander-in-chief, General O'Coa- nor, spoke of it as a " question on which lawyers wy surprise that England either could not or would not avenge us amply ?' He said, * Ah ! you are quite mistaken there. A II the, power of the great Napoleon could not put down the rising in Hayti, and that ivas successful ; for the troops died of disease before they could meet the people, in the mountains. ' He also said, India is not a case in point, for India is a flat country, and the English tr 002)8 could overrun it and conquer it ; but this country is a mountainous country, and before the British troops could reach the people in the moun- tains, they would die of disease. ' Of course, he said this in mere abstract talking." The Commissioners mention other matters, and among others, his inflammatory address originally issued for the end of July, on the occasion when the outbreak was apprehended, on the 1st August, and kept in circulation since that time. " On llth August a printed address to the people of St. Thomas-in-th East, headed 'State of the Island,' was posted up on a cotton tree in the main road at Morant Bay, opposite William Chisholm's house. The original draft of this address, in the writing of Mr. Gordon, was given by him to a compositor at Kingston shortly before, to be set up in type, with directions to forward copies to one Rodney at St. Ann's Bay, others to James Sullivan at Bath, and further copies to Paul Bogle and to William Chisholm at Morant Bay. " These copies were sent. In this address is found the following pas- sage : " ' People of St. Thomas-in-the-East ! You have been ground down too long already ; shake off your sloth, and speak like honourable and free men at your meeting. Lot not a crafty, Jesuitical priesthood deceive you. REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 81 Prepare for your duty. Remember the destitution in the midst of your families, and your forlorn condition. The Government have taxed you to defend your own rights against the enormities of an unscrupulous and oppressive foreigner, Mr. Gustos Ketelholdt. You feel this. It is no wonder you do. You have been dared in this provoking act, and it is sufficient to extinguish your long patience. This is not time when such deeds should be perpetrated, but as they have been it is your duty to speak out and to act too. We advise you to be up and doing, and to maintain your cause. You must be united in your efforts. ' "An open-air meeting on Saturday, August 12th, held in the market place in front of the Court House, at M orant Bay, under a gynnep tree, was presided over by Mr. Gordon, at which Paul Bogle and Moses Bogle were present. Resolutions on the conduct of the Government, and on the depressed state of the labouring classes, and the price of labour, and low rate of wages, were passed ; and in reference to the circular called the 'Queen's advice to the people,' Mr. Gordon said that 'The Queen's message to the working classes of Jamaica is not true ; it is a lie ; it does not come from the Queen ; the Queen does not know anything about it. ' " At the time of this meeting Mr. Gordon was staying at his cottage on the Rhine estate, sixteen miles from Morant Bay. " In familiar conversation with Mrs. Major, the wife of Dr. Major, his tenant of part of that estate, he was told by her that in his speeches which she had recently been reading he was certainly guilty of high treason, and she would accuse him of it. He replied, ' Oh, no, they have printed it wrong ; I never made use of such expressions, and you can't do it. I have just gone as far as I can go, but no further. ' "In this conversation he spoke of the Governor as ' a wicked man,' and said ' that it would be a blessing to the country if some one would shoot him/ and that ' Mr. Herschel and the Baron were "bad and, wicked men," and it would be a blessing if these three men were removed.' " These three gentlemen, it will be remembered, were amongst those slain in the massacre, by the men to whom those sentiments were addressed. r " "On the night of the 15th of August a meeting was held at a how belonging to Mr. Gordon at Morant Bay, opposite the Wesleyan Chapel, at which James McLaren acted as Secretary, with about thirty persons present ; from this meeting five persons were turned away as spies, who had not previously attended the meeting on the 12th of August. " Mr. G. W. Gordon attended, and spoke at a meeting held at the ' Alley ' in Vere on the 4th of September. He is thus reported to have spoken, amongst other matters. ' They report to the Queen that vou are thieves The notice that is said to be the Queen's advice is all trash ; it is no advice of the Queen at all 1 was told by some of you that your overseers said that if you attended this meeting a 82 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. they would tear down your houses. Tell them that I, George William Gordon, say they dare not do it. It is tyranny. You must do what Hayti does. You have a bad name now, but you will have a worse one then.' "Dr. Bruce, a friend and political supporter of Mr. Gordon, who intro- duced him to the meeting, and took a part in it, and some others, deny that Mr. Gordon ever made use of the words ' You must do what Hayti "The speech, however, containing these words, was taken down at the time in some careful notes by a witness (Peart), who produced the same before us. These notes were well and distinctly written. It would further appear that this speech must have contained some matter at least calculated to excite some alarm of disturbance, from the following passage in a letter addressed to Dr. Bruce by Mr. Sydney Levien, the editor of a local newspaper, in reference to this Vere meeting. ' I could scarcely command vital thought enough yesterday to do justice to your meeting, and against the wish of "William I wrote the feeble editorial that appeared to second the noble exertions of the Vere people. All I desire is to shield you and them from the charge of anarchy and tumult, which in a short time must follow these fearful demonstrations. How I succeeded you must judge for yourself.'" .... " On the 8th September, Laurence (Gordon's agent) wrote to Mr. Gordon, 4 The day of retribution draws nigh.' " It may be mentioned here, that this man (Gordon's own agent) was clearly privy to the massacre, having been proved by several respectable witnesses to have spoken to them about it on the day it occurred, and before it was known evidence upon which he was tried and executed by court-martial. "On the llth September Gordon wrote to Lawrence, 'The case of Gordon v. Ketelholdt terminated yesterday in a verdict for the defendant, but it shall not rest here : these multiplications of wrongs are only the gathering up of future troubles.' On the 14th September he wrote 10 Lawrence, ' I fear we cannot mend matters in St. Thomas-in-the-East. I believe the Governor and his nest of Custodes are capable of anything ; the Lord will soon scatter them as the chaff before the wind. "Wait, and see the result. ' " On the 28th of September he wrote to Mr. Lawrence : Poor Jackson was in the midst of conspiracy. Rector Cooke will get up a charge of conspiracy against any one over whom the Governor has power, and get him dismissed. The man, Mr. Eyre, is an arch liar, and he -supports all his emissaries .... The wicked shall be destroyed. This is decreed. God is our refuge and strength, a very pleasant (sic) help in trouble." REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 83 This was at the end of September. The outbreak began on the 7th October ; the massacre was on the llth October. That massacre was conducted by Gordon's associate, Bogle. His own agent, to whom he thus wrote, was proved to have been privy to it. And in that massacre all the persons he had thus for months been denouncing, and whose destruction he had predicted, were under the auspices of his intimate associates slain. The Commissioners, as to this, reported : " The news of the events of Wednesday evening, the llth of October, did not reach Kingston till Thursday, the 12th of October, at noon. " On the llth October, Mr. G. W. Gordon was residing at his property, ' Cherry Garden, ' in St. Andrews, a short distance from Kingston. He was engaged in trade, and had business offices in that town, where he went on that day, returning home in the evening. On his return, he is said by his wife to have informed her of the outbreak at Morant Bay. "As the outbreak took place at a distance of more than thirty miles, late on the afternoon of the llth, and was not known in Kingston till the middle of the follouring day, it was suggested to Mrs. Gordon that probably it was on Thursday, the 12th, that Mr. Gordon first spoke to her on the subject. Upon this she replied, that ' Wednesday evening he brought the news,' and that ' Mr. Gordon came up on the 12th, and said the outbreak at Morant Say was true that we had heard of on tJie Wednesday. He added, ' that the feeling seemed to be so strong to put (sic) a pistol to him, and get rid of him, as they did the President of America. ' " When the news of the events of October llth reached Kingston on the following day, they were not fully believed by many persons there in the first instance. "On this day, about 2 o'clock, Mr. Lee, a friend of Mr. Gordon, men- tioned to him the news of what had happened at Morant Bay, and Mr. Gordon seemed much distressed. "Mr. Lee said, 'George, I fear your agitation at Morant Bay has been the cause of all this.' Mr. Gordon said, 'I never gave them bad advice. I only told them the Lord would send them a day of deliverance. ' And when speaking of Baron Ketelholdt being killed, Mr. Gordon added '/ told him not to go, but he was such an obstinate man.' "Dr. Major, Mr. Gordon's tenant at the Rhine, about 16 miles from Morant Bay, was at 7 o'clock on the morning of October llth, leaving the Rhine in order to attend the meeting of the vestry at Morant Bay. He met Mr. Lawrence (Gordon's agent) as he came out of the gate, who tried to dissuade him from going, by saying, ' I should strongly advise you not to go. ' Dr. Major went, however, and about 2 o'clock Mrs. Major sent to G 2 84 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. Lawrence for intelligence, at which hour he called on her at the Rhine, saying that ' he heard nothing further than that there was a great dis- turbance, but that she need be under no apprehension about the doctor, he would be quite safe, but the Baron and Mr. Herschel he feared were doomed/ This conversation was in point of time before the fight had begun at Morant Bay, where, according to all the evidence, the Baron and Mr. Herschel were not killed till after 5 o'clock. " About 3 o'clock the same afternoon Mrs. Major again made inquiry by note sent by her servant to Lawrence, and he then sent word by the ser- vant to her, ' that the doctor would be quite safe, but Mr. Herschel and the Baron he had no hope of. ' About the same time he also wrote to her the following note : " ' Dear Madam, " ' Things seem in a fearful way ; doctor did not seem to know of the rebellion at Morant Bay till I told him, but I beg you will not be troubled. I have no doubt the feeling will be quieted. The volunteer force moved on the scene of action this morning at 1 o'clock. I will let you know ^f anything more transpires. ' " This note was received before 4 o'clock an the llth of October, and at that time the events had not yet ended in the deaths of the Custos and Mr. Her- schel, nor could the news of what had happened at Morant Say have reached the Rhine at a distance of sixteen miles. "On the 12th October, the next day, Lawrence wrote to Mrs. Major as follows : i '"Dear Madam, " ' I am sorry I have no reliable news for you. I have heard a good deal, but think much of what I hear is false. There is a report about the doctor, but the same is not true. The negroes know full well who fit for retribution. ' " On the 12th October Gordon wrote to Lawrence : 4 ' * Terrible things are doing at Morant Bay. I know nothing of the proceedings or the particulars, but here I am blamed for it all. I feel for the poor people of Morant Bay. A steamer with detachments of troops has gone up. I wonder how it will all end. The Lord have mercy ! / regret that the people have acted unadvisedly. This is sad matter to con- template.' "On Friday morning, the 13th October, he went over to Spanish Town before 10 o'clock in the morning. The case of Gordon v. Ketelholdt had been fixed for argument in Court there that day. He called at the office of his attorney there, and asked how the matter stood, and was told that the suit was at an end, in consequence of the death of the Baron, if that fact REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 85 was true. He then made inquiries as to the costs of the suit, whereupon his attorney declined under the serious existing circumstances to enter into such details. A person then present remarked to him that there was plenty of time for him to go to St. Thomas-in-the-East, and to exercise his influence on the side of order ; to which Mr. Gordon replied, 'If I go to St. Thomas-in-the-East, the moment martial law is proclaimed I shall be the first man hung.' " The Commissioners went on to make comments on these facts ; and the facts they stated have all the more effect, on account of the evident desire of the Commissioners to put the case as favourably as possible to Gordon. They actually commenced by taking, and adopting as true, Gordon's own account of his conduct : "Upon a careful review of this evidence we have formed the opinion that the true explanation of Mr. Gordon's conduct is to be found in the account which he has given of himself. 'I have just gone as far as I can go, but no further.' 'If I wanted a rebellion I could have had one long ago. ' ' I have been asked several times to head a rebellion, but there is no fear of that. I will try first a demonstration of it, but I must first upset that fellow Herschel, and kick him out of the Vestry, and the Baron also, or bad will come of it. ' "Mr. Gordon might know well the distinction between a 'rebellion' and a ' demonstration of it. ' He might be able to trust himself to go as far as he could with safety, and no further. But that would not be so easy to his ignorant and fanatical followers. They would find it difficult to restrain themselves from rebellion when making a demonstration of it. " If a man like Paul Bogle was in the habit of hearing such expressions as those contained in Gordon's letters, as that the reign of their oppressors would be short, and that the Lord was about to destroy them, it would not take much to convince him that he might be the appointed instrument in the Lord's hand for effecting that end ; and it is clear that this was Bogle's belief, as we find that after the part he had taken in the massacre at Morant Bay he, in his chapel at Stoney Gut, returned thanks to God that ' he had gone to do that work, and that God had prospered him in his work. ' " It is clear, too, that the conduct of Gordon had been such as to convince both friends and enemies of his being a party to the rising. "We learn from Mr. Gordon himself, that in Kingston, where he car- ried on business, this was the general belief as soon as the news of the outbreak was received. " But it was fully believed also by those engaged in the outbreak. Bogle did not hesitate to speak of himself as acting in concert with him. When c^ HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. Dr. Major was dragged out of his hiding place on the night of the llth of October, he saved himself by exclaiming that Mr. Gordon ' would not wish to have him injured, ' and when Mr. Jackson made a similar appeal for his own life to the murderers of Mr. Hire it appears to have been equally successful. The effect which was likely to follow the meetings which took place during the Spring and Summer of 1865, in some of which Mr. Gordon took a part, was foreseen by one of his most ardent supporters, who, writing to a common friend on the subject of an article he had inserted in a newspaper respecting the Vere meeting, used these words, ' All I desire is to shield you from the charge of anarchy and tumult, which in a short time must follow these fearful demonstrations.' " ' ' Although, therefore, it appears exceedingly probable that Mr. Gordon, by his words and writings, produced a material effect on the minds of Bogle and his followers, and did much to produce that state of excitement and dis- content in different parts of the island, which rendered the spread of the insurrection exceedingly probable, yet we cannot see, in the evidence which has been adduced, any sufficient proof either of his complicity in the out- break at Morant Bay, or of his having been a party to a general conspiracy against the Government." Here it will be observed, as most remarkable, that the Commissioners, in their special and careful finding about Gordon, do not negative the real charge against him, that he was party to a local conspiracy for an insurrection, which they found to have existed, and which, of course, if successful, he must have known as his own language about Hayti showed would have spread with rapidity, and speedily become universal and fatal. The Com- missioners cannot see in the evidence any sufficient proof (i.e., sufficient to satisfy them) of complicity in the outbreak, that is, the particular outbreak, an outbreak on that particular day and hour, or of his having been a party to a general conspiracy against the Government,* * Before the inquiry commenced, a gentleman named Edenborough communicated to the Secretary of State information clearly tending strongly to connect Gordon with certain Haytian negroes who were in Jamaica at the time, and with some plan they had in contemplation for securing the independence of the island as a negro state. He wrote to Mr. Cardwell, just before the Commission issued, as follows : " Mr. Edenborough to Mr. Cardwell. In June last I was at Kingston, Jamaica, for a few days, having landed from a vessel the property of the Confederate States of America, which remained in the offing. Whilst in Kingston I was called upon by Gordon, who said he was connected with the Government of the island. He stated he nnder.vt.ood it was my desire 1 to dispose of the vessel and armament, the war REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 87 i.e., a conspiracy all through the island ; but they care- fully refrain from negativing complicity in a local insur- rection, which must, if successful, soon become general. being concluded, and said he wished to purchase the arms on board and the vessel (a beautiful clipper-schooner) if possible. The arms he wished to purchase consisted of breech-loading rifles, nine shooting pistols, hand-grenades, small tor- pedos, and whatever accoutrements, fixed ammunition, and gunpowder there might be on board. He wished them to be landed on the south side of the island in the neighbourhood of Black River. He expressed himself as a strong sympa thizer with the Confederate States in their struggle for independence. On learning that I intended sending the crew of the schooner to England on board a vessel then lying in Annotto Bay, on the north side, he proposed to charter the vessel for a voyage to the Island of Great Inagua and back, there to receive on board a certain refugee Haytian general, and one or two others, and to touch at St. Nicholas Mole, Hayti, for another on the return voyage. A quantity of arms and powder, which he stated had arrived at Inagua from the United States, were also to be brought down to Jamaica and landed in the neighbourhood of Black Eiver. He was accompanied at the time by a bright mulatto, whom he introduced to me as a general, and whom I frequently saw afterwards in Kingston, where he resides. He referred me to a mercantile house of credit in Kingston, who would become responsible in case he should become the purchaser of the vessel and armament, or the voyage to Inagua should be made, both of which I declined. I was then under the impression he was connected with the Dominicans against Spain, as in his conversation he and his Haytian friend inquired the possibility of converting ordinary small boats into torpedo rams against war-vessels block- ading ports, &c." This was confirmed by the fact that a schooner was seized with several Hay- tians on board, among whom was a General Lamotte (see the Parliamentary Papers on Disturbances, and also the evidence in Mr. Eyre's case), and with arms and ammunition on board. Somehow or other (it never was clearly explained how) this gentleman was not examined by the Commissioners in London, nor was his evidence obtained in Jamaica; and though a Mr. Stewart mentioned the matter to them (Minutes of Evidence), they never went further into it. It happened, however, that after their inquiry was concluded, the matter was in more ways than one established upon oath in the course of judicial proceedings in this country. In an action against Mr. Eyre, the writer of the above letter made an affidavit verifying the facts ; and after- wards some of the assailants of Mr. Eyre having assailed Mr. Edenborough, asserting that his story was false, he brought an action, substantiated his truthfulness in the witness-box, and received damages. Thus it may fairly be taken that the above- especially as it was remarkably confirmed by various facts in the evidence before the Commissioners was in substance true; and that being so, it tallies entirely with the evidence as to Gordon's mind having been running upon insurrection, and especially upon the precedent of Hayti. It was reported to the Commissioners that Gordon said that all the powers of the great Napoleon could not put down the ruing in Hayti, and that it was successful because the troops died of disease before they could meet the people in the mountain*. And he added that India was not a case in point, for India was a flat country, and the English troops could overrun and conquer it ; but Jamaica was a mountainous country, and before the British troops could reach the people in the mountains they would die of disease. All this strongly confirms the view evidently taken by the Commissioners that Gordon was a party to the local conspiracy with a general object. 88 IT1STOHY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. On the contrary, they expressly find that he used lan- guage calculated to incite to such an insurrection ; that is, language which, therefore, he must have known would lead to it, and therefore must have intended. The Com- missioners went on to say : " On the assumption that, if there was in fact a widespread conspiracy, Mr. G. W. Gordon must have been a party to it, the conclusion at which we have arrived in his case is decisive as to the non-existence of such a conspiracy. The only evidence beyond that of vague rumours in any degree tending to show an intended rising at some future time was given by one witness, who deposed to a statement made by an insurgent engaged in attacking a property in the neighbourhood of Bath, that ' it was not their time ; that Christmas was their time, and they were preparing for it, but as it had come on so soon they must go on and mash down everything, and kill all the white and brown." That, indeed, was, in a single sentence, the whole case. From some qause the insurrection had come sooner than was expected. In that sense it might not have been general or extending all over the island. The attempt to arrest the leaders had evidently precipitated matters, but it is plain, from the facts found by the Commissioners, (1) that there was a conspiracy for an insurrection ; and (2) that it was well known that if successful it must speedily become universal. This was the whole case. And such being the result of the Commissioners' report as to the insurrection, it appears still more plainly from their statement and approval of the military mea- sures taken for its suppression, and, above all, to prevent it from spreading. In the first place, they distinctly approved the declara- tion of martial law, and evidently understood it in the sense in which it had always been understood, as some- thing different from common law, and very terrible in its nature. They stated : ' ' The Privy Council were then summoned. They met on the evening of the 12th, and all the information which had been received up to that time was laid bpfore them. They rame unanimously fn f.hr rnnchisirw tlifit REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 89 it would be desirable at once to proclaim martial law. By an Act of the Local Legislature of 9 Viet. c. 35, after a recital that the appearance of public danger by invasion or otherwise may sometimes render the imposi- tion of martial law necessary, but that, from experience of the mischief and calamities attending it, it must ever be considered as amongst the greatest of evils, it is provided that martial law should not in future be de- clared or imposed but by the opinion and advice of a Council of War." And then they quoted the terms and the declaration of martial law, as drawn by the Attorney- General and approved by the Chief- Justice : " That martial-law shall prevail ; that our military forces shall have all power of exercising the rights of belligerents against such of the inhabitants as they may consider opposed to the Government and the well-being of our loyal subjects." The Commissioners then went on to say : ' ' We are of opinion that the Legislature of Jamaica, in the recital to the Act just referred to, have not in any sense exaggerated the magnitude of the evils attending martial law ; and we are confirmed in that opinion by what is shown to have taken place in the island during the few weeks of its continuance. But with the full knowledge of all that had occurred, we are nevertheless also of opinion that upon the information before them, and with the knowledge they possessed of the state and circumstances of the island, the Council of War had good reason for the advice which they gave, and that the Governor icas well justified in acting upon that advice" That is to say, in declaring and carrying out martial law as it had always been understood, and as it was evidently understood by the Legislature of Jamaica, and as it had, in fact, been understood and carried out on this occasion, excluding, of course, any exceptional excesses ; and they accordingly proceeded to consider its execution with a view to the question of excess. It had evidently never entered into their heads that " martial law " could possibly be supposed to mean anything but martial law, i.e., lex martialis, or the law of war, or that it could mean the application of military law to the militia, or soldiers of the Crown, who, as soon as they are called out, are, ipso facto by the Mutiny Act, subject to military law. They con- 90 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. sidered that martial law meant martial law. That is what it had always been understood to mean ; namely, the law of war. And they proceeded to consider its execution under the two main heads into which it is divided .military operations, or measures of warfare, and military executions, or measures of summary justice. And first, as to the military operations, as to which it is to be observed that these operations, which are entirely approved, and which therefore, it is to be presumed, and it is indeed apparent from the whole tenor of their remarks, and the effect and result of their report, were really necessary, that is, on account of a rebellion actually existing, even although not in the form of actual insurrection, were carried on, and covered the district the scene of martial law, up to the end of the month a period a whole week later than Gordon's execution. " The Military Operations. "When intelligence of the outbreak reached the Government, troops were immediately sent to the scene of action, the object being to limit the disturbances within certain bounds. With this view, detachments composed of the "West India regiments serving in Jamaica were despatched to Morant Bay and to Port Antonio, at each of which places military posts were established. At the same time a party of the 2nd battalion 6th Regiment marched from Newcastle to proceed along the line of the Blue Mountain Valley, endeavour to interrupt the insurgents who were reported to be advancing by that route. "Troops were also sent to Linstead in St. Thomas-in-the-Vale, about 14 miles to the north of Spanish Town ; and volunteers, pensioners, and special constables were enrolled for the protection of Kingston, and for the general maintenance of order. ' ' These military arrangements appear to us to have been prompt and judicious. "By confining the insurgents to the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-East and its neighbourhood the disturbances were kept in check, and were pre- vented from spreading to other parts of the island." So that there was danger of this, which implies that, to use the language of an imperial' statute, the Act allow- ing martial law in Ireland, " the spirit of rebellion pervaded the island, and had -been manifested by an actual insurrec- REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 91 tion." To repress it, and prevent it from breaking out again, was the object of martial law and of the military measures and movements which are thus particularly described. Thus, for instance, it is stated : " Easington was again occupied from the 21st to the 2,9th of October, with the view of keeping up the communication with the troops who were posted under Colonel Hobbs in the Blue Mountain Valley. By order of Brigadier- General Nelson, who was in command at Morant Bay, Lieutenant Adcock of the 6th Royal Regiment, and ten men, accompanied by a body of volunteers and armed planters, marched northward from the Bay through Leith Hall to Golden Grove on the Plantain Garden River on the 21st of October. On the morning of the same day Ensign Cullen was sent with 50 men of the 1st West India Regiment southward from Manchioneal to meet Lieutenant Adcock." So that for a whole week after the execution of Gordon the country was the scene of necessary military operations, that is, military operations necessary for the suppression of rebellion, and during that period, it appeared that rebels were actually in the field against the troops ; for the Commissioners state as to one of the detachments : " Acting on intelligence that the rebels in force were occupying forts they had made at Torrington, Colonel Fyfe proceeded to march upon and attack the place, and as he advanced several shots were fired at his party, and one man was wounded. "The steep and wooded nature of the ground made it necessary to act with caution. The place was attacked on Saturday, October 21st, and the insurgents were driven out. Seven of them were shot in the attack. The huts of the settlement, in which large quantities of plunder were found, were burnt ; but orders were given by Colonel Fyfe that in the burning of houses care should be taken to leave some building as a place of shelter for women and children. On proceeding through the country to Stoney Gut a party of Maroons, under Colonel Fyfe, shot four men, one of whom was wearing the ring of the deceased Gustos, Baron Ketelholdt. The insurgents had constructed in this part of the country, between Torrington and Stoney Gut, a rude field-work, by felling large trees, and throwing them as a barri- cade across the angle of the road ; they were removed with considerable difficulty." This was on the day of Gordon's trial, and it will be important to bear this in mind, when it is found after- 92 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. wards stated in the criminal prosecutions, even upon judicial authority, that not only at the time of the trial, but for some time previously, the rebellion had been entirely suppressed. It may be mentioned here, that the last-mentioned detachment were Maroons, who were said to have killed " hundreds " in the bush. The Commissioners stated that the total number was 25 ! and of these almost all were (as they stated the facts) justly killed, indeed most of them in actual conflict. The Commissioners carefully described all that took place in the execution of martial law under its two heads of military operations and military executions, both of which were distinctly pointed at in the Governor's first des- patches to the Secretary of State, when he described the steps he had taken to put down the rebellion. " I may premise that there were three principal objects to be attained : ' ' First. To save the lives of the ladies, children, and other isolated and unprotected persons in the districts where the rebellion existed. "Secondly. To head the insurrectionary movement, and prevent the further spread of the rebellion in its progress along and around the east end of the island. " Thirdly. To punish the rebels, and restore peace to the disturbed districts." The Commissioners detailed all the operations under- taken and all the measures to be adopted, very much as the officers had described them in their reports at the time ; mentioning any instances of excess, and taking, at the same time, due care that the responsibility for it should be placed on the right party, and not upon the officers, but the actual perpetrators, where the sanction of the officers did not appear, nor throwing upon the Generals the responsibility of acts not within, but contrary to, the orders they had issued. "On Friday, the 13th of October, Captain Luke was sent forward from Morant Bay with a force of 120 men of the 1st West India Regiment to REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 93 Bath, which he reached on the following day. At the ' Rhine,' an estate near Bath, he found nearly 100 refugees, consisting of the women a/id chil- dren from the families of the surrounding districts. These refugees were escorted to Fort Morant, whence they were embarked for Kingston. Many of them had undergone severe privations, and some were severely wounded. " On the morning of the 14th a man was tried by court-martial at Port Morant, and executed, who was said to be one of the leading rebels, and had threatened the life of the Collector of Customs at that place. During the same day a party of fifty marines and sailors under Lieutenant Oxley, Royal Navy, advanced from Morant Bay, westwards as far as Easington. On the road two negroes were seen running away, and failing to stop when ordered to do so, they were both shot. The same fate befell a prisoner, who during the march attempted to escape by flight. A fourth man was tried and executed, by order of court-martial, at Easington, for having joined in the outbreak on the llth. On the 18th of October 90 men were sent up to Stoney Gut from Morant Bay. This party on their arrival took possession of that place, and of the chapel belonging to Paul Bogle. On this occasion an act of cruelty towards a woman has been charged against this party. As far, however, as the officer in command and his men were concerned, their acts, appear to have been limited to this : That they detained the woman during the day to act as cook for the troops, confining her to the spot by attaching a long cord to her wrist, the other end being fastened to the door of the building to prevent her escape. Whatever else may have been done to her was done before the troops arrived." A striking contrast is here afforded to the coarse and wholesale accusations of cruelty which were afterwards heaped indiscriminately upon generals, officers, and. men, for all acts of excess committed, or alleged to have been committed, as if the generals were responsible for every- thing done by the officers, and the officers for everything done by the men, with or without orders, or even contrary to orders ; and as though the Governor was responsible for everything done by everybody, during, the whole period of martial law. The Commissioners, on the con- trary, were most careful to discriminate between acts done without authority, and acts done under orders, and also to distinguish whose the orders were ; and they did the military commanders on the one hand, and the officers on the other, the justice of mentioning the precise 94 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. orders or instructions issued ; and further, it appears that all the orders given were orders of the military commander*, and that none were given by the Governor. Thus they stated : "After Lieutenant Adcock had reached Golden Grove, and visited the neighbouring estates that had been sacked, he ordered seven men to be tried by court-martial, six of whom were executed on the 24th of October. They were not executed until their trials had been reported to Brigadier Nelson at head -quarters, and the following despatch had been received in reply : "Memo. Lieut. Adcock, A.D.C., commanding detachment, is hereby authorised to carry out the sentences awarded on the prisoners brought in. " ' It is not desirable now to inflict capital punishment, except on men actually found armed, or those who were, ringleaders or murderers.' "The following general order was next issued by Brigadier-General Nelson on the 25th of October : " ' Officers commanding respectively must forbid any man to enter a house in or near his place under any pretext whatever, unless accom- panied by a non-commissioned or a warrant officer. Any man found doing so to be handed over to the Provost-marshal for summary punishment. ' " A party of 25 men detached from the 1st West India Regiment were ordered by Brigadier-General Nelson on the 31st of October to be sent from Manchioneal to Golden Grove for permanent service ; and on the 2nd of November an officer proceeded from Morant Bay to take command of them, with the following orders given to him by Brigadier Nelson : " ' It will be necessary for you to exercise strict control over the men of your detachment, and not to permit any man to quit his quarters for the purpose of foraging. " ' You are not sent to your post for the purpose of punishing the negro, but to maintain order, and to afford protection to the inhabitants gene- rally. You are not authorised to inflict summary punishment. If any supposed rioter be sent as prisoner to you, be good enough to inquire into the case, and if you consider the same as of a serious nature, send him to my head-quarters with the evidence against him. " 'You will doubtless have many prisoners brought before you, and some possibly through the animus of the inhabitants. Petty cases of larceny I cannot interfere with ; they must hereafter be dealt with the civil authority. 1 ' I am quite aware you will be much pressed to administer punishment REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 95 to supposed criminals, and you must be firm, temperate, and judicious in all communications with civilians. ' " At the time that the district of Plantain Garden River was occupied by the military, 13 persons belonging to the neighbouring villages were shot without trial by parties of soldiers said to belong to the West India Regiment, others by parties of black soldiers. During the course of the operations of which Morant Bay was the head-quarters, the evidence and returns relating to trials of prisoners show that 187 executions were carried out in that place. Here it will be observed that the acts of excess were not only committed by parties of soldiers (i.e., black soldiers, for the regiments mentioned are black regiments) without orders of their officers, but that even had the officers given any such orders, they would have been entirely contrary to the orders of the military commander. So as to another detachment sent out, the mountainous district which included Stoney Gut, the seat of the stronghold of the insurgents, the head-quarters being a plantation which the rebels had attacked, Monklands, about sixteen miles from Morant Bay. The troops went on the 15th October, and the Commissioners stated : " During this week the troops made excursions down the valley to the neighbouring villages, where the insurgents were said to be collected. "Colonel Hobbs reported on the 16th of October to Major-General O'Connor, 'that numbers of the rebels had come in, having thrown away their arms, seeking protection, and though worthy of death,' that he ' shrank from the responsibility of executing them, without first receiving the General's or Governor's wishes respecting them. ' ' ' A despatch was sent the same day from the Major-General to Colonel Hobbs, which crossed on the road the despatch last mentioned, stating that ' Stoney Gut was said to be a hotbed of ruffians, and that it would be ad- visable if he looked it up.' "These instructions added, 'The Major-General would like you to be careful about burning villages, and not to do so without it is clear that the inhabitants have joined the insurgents. The Major-General can give you no instructions, and leaves all to your own judgment.' On the evening of the 18th Colonel Hobbs, then at Monklands, received orders to push on to Stoney Gut at once. "On the 20th October he returned with his detachment to Monklands, 96 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASK. which was reached at night, and there he found instructions from Ma;or- General O'Connor to make Monklands his head-quarters, and the Major- General expressed a hope that the Colonel would deal in a more summary manner with the rebels, and on no account to forward prisoners to Kings- ton. During this march through the valley, 11 prisoners found at Chigoe Foot Market on the morning of the 19th were tried and executed. They were charged with having been engaged in the disturbances and murders at Morant Bay. Colonel Hobbs reported these executions to Major-General O'Connor the same day, stating that the men ' were captured from the rebel camp,' and that ' finding their guilt clear, and being unable either to take or leave them, he had them shot.' " The same evening, on his return to Chigoe Foot Market, a body of 50 prisoners was found there, 27 of whom were selected as known rebels by a witness, who represented himself to have been pressed into their company by Paul Bogle. The 27 were tried and convicted on the morning of the 20th at Chigoe Foot Market, and sentenced to death. They were carried on to Coley and Fonthill, two villages a short distance up the valley, to which they respectively belonged, and of 16 brought out for execution at Coley, 1 4 were shot, and two escaped. Nine others were shot, and then hung up inside a chapel at Fonthill, which had belonged to McLaren, one of the leaders of the insurgents. "On the 21st of October Colonel Hobbs received a despatch from the Major-General, dated the day before, in which the General informs him as follows : ' I am much pleased by your adopting a decided course with regard to captured rebels ; the many you have sent into camp on mere suspicion of vague charges has caused some embarrassment. One of two courses seems to me, under martial law, to be the rule for your conduct ; if on careful investigation the captured persons are innocent, always giving them the advantage of a doubt, then release them ; but, if guilty, and taken red-handed, summary justice and execution of the sentence.' About 32 other executions took place in Monklands before the troops were with- drawn, all of which appear in the return of deaths. During the operations along the valley, about eight casual deaths were inflicted by soldiers without authority, on inhabitants in some of the villages. " Some of these persons were shot in their houses, others while passing in the road, and two of the number were infirm persons, incapable of resistance. One of the two latter, however, suffered through a mistake. About 493 dwellings, situate in the various settlements of this district, were destroyed by fire during the same time. " Now here again the responsibility of commander, officers, and soldiers, is kept clear and distinct, and no one is con- sidered liable for acts of excess, unless he either did them REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 97 or directed them. It will also be observed that the soldiers were black soldiers, and that most of the excesses were committed by them without orders, and only out of their own instincts and impulses, which could hardly have been expected to be so sanguinary and savage, even to- wards those of their own race and their own blood, so that the officers could scarcely be considered responsible, still. less the military commander, who was at a distance ; least of all the Governor, who was at the seat of Government. The only instance of any particular order given by the Governor, was in regard to one of the detachments, to the same effect as his general suggestion to the General, that the object should be to cut off and capture the rebels : " Operations for suppressing the outbreak were at the time carried on through the country on the north side of the island. On the 15th October Captain Hole marched from Port Antonio with 40 men of the 6th Regiment, and 60 men of the 1st West India Regiment under Ensign Cullen. Cap- tain Hole received orders from Brigadier- General Nelson to proceed to Manchioneal about 20 miles eastward from Port Antonio, with directions * not to leave the line of march in search of rebels, nor to allow prisoners to be brought in except leaders of rebels ; and that those who were found with arms were to be shot. ' Shortly afterwards, and before his departure, he got further orders from Governor Eyre, who directed him ' to go off the road to meet any body of the rebels he, heard of, and to engage and make examples of them.' " That is to say as is plainly implied by the terms used any bodies of men joined in actual rebellion, or, as the General put it, found in arms. They were not by his orders to go merely in search of rebels, i.e., scattered and dispersed ; but if they heard of bodies of rebels in force, they were to go and engage them. There again, it will be observed how careful the Commissioners were to dis- criminate between the responsibilities of those concerned, while careful to notice any instance of excess or even of rash, though honest, exercise of martial law. "Just as the troops under Captain Hole were leaving Port Antonio on the 15th, six or seven soldiers of the West India Regiment, not of tho H 98 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. numbers attached to his force, galloped past, stating that they had been ordered to come on. Upon this they were told to go forward, and to join the advanced guard under Ensign Lewis. Upon their reaching the advanced guard they said that the Captain had ordered them to proceed to Long Bay, and they galloped forward, and were not seen again during the day. In consequence of an alarm given near Cog Hall of an expected attack by the insurgents, a skirmishing party was thrown forward, who shot two or three negroes. In the course of the day Captain Hole found 11 or 12 dead bodies lying near the road. As these had not been shot by any of the troops under his command, it is supposed they must have fallen by the hands of the mounted soldiers of the West India Regiment who had ridden forward contrary to orders the day before. A great quantity of pillaged property was also found during the march scattered along the road, and deposited in the adjacent cottages of the negroes. At Manchioneal, Courts-martial sat during 11 days from the 17th October to the 3rd November. Thirty-three prisoners were sentenced to death by these Courts and executed. ' ' During the time that the troops under Captain Hole were at Man- chioneal, a detachment of the 1st West India Regiment was sent to a place in the district. The guides led them to another place, and three soldiers separated from the main body. They were absent some days, and on their return they brought with them two waggon loads of property recovered from the plunder taken by insurgents from the houses of Mr. Hire and Mr. Shortridge. These three soldiers reported to Captain Hole that during their absence they had shot 10 rebels, three of whom had been concerned in murdering Mr. Hire. On the 17th October a black soldier of the "West India Regiment, who had deserted, was met on the road near Long Bay, going towards Port Antonio. He stopped three constables who were taking four prisoners under their charge. The soldier took away the pri- soners from these constables, and having placed them on the road at a con- venient distance, he shot them in succession. Later in the day a soldier, being alone, and supposed to be the same deserter, shot six other prisoners at a place near Manchioneal, in the presence of a head constable and some other persons. These 10 deaths are attended with such barbarity on the part of the soldier, and such cowardice on the part of the constables and other persons who witnessed what was done without interfering to prevent it, as to call for special notice and condemnation. There is ground for believing that this soldier may be identified. "At Port Antonio 54 prisoners were tried by courts -martial, and suffered death during martial law. The deaths by casual shooting along the line of march amount to 25. In the villages of the district between Port Antonio and the country bordering on the Plaintain Garden River, 217 cottages were burnt." Here, again, it will be observed, that the instances of REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 99 excess, and the most atrocious that were disclosed, were acts committed by soldiers, not only without orders, but contrary to orders, and in the absence of their officers ; and were moreover committed by blacks upon men of their own blood and race, and therefore were atrocities which no one could reasonably have supposed likely to take place. On the other hand, even a single instance of execution, by order of an officer, is recorded ; as in one instance specially noticed by the Commissioners, that of a man named Donaldson, which they appear to have con- sidered a hasty, though honest, exercise of martial law. ' ' Murray, a man not in custody, but believed to be one of those who murdered Mr. Hire, was proved, and was admitted by Donaldson, to have come to his house a few days before, having with him Mr. Hire's horse and saddle. " Donaldson was called upon to give information of the place where Murray could be found, and of the time when he left him. This informa- tion Donaldson refused to give, and he was executed by order of Captain Hole for the offence of harbouring Murray. " Later on the march, a prisoner, who had been released by the insur- gents from the Morant Bay Gaol, and who had been found with a cutlass and some stolen property, was brought in and shot ; and another prisoner, in possession of a flask of powder, was afterwards shot at Long Bay." The Commissioners mentioned that this officer most properly caused several soldiers whom he had detected in acts of excess to be punished. In conclusion they stated : "This concludes our report of the military measures adopted for the suppression of the disturbances. It appears to us that the strategical positions taken up, the detachments posted in the disturbed districts and in the island generally, and the active co-operation of your Majesty's naval forces, produced a most beneficial effect ; and by the prompt and rapid manner in which the different movements were executed,. the out- break was overcome in a very short period. " That is, the outbreak of the rebellion, not the rebellion, which is a very different thing, and the confusion of these things afterwards caused much injustice. The military measures (which, it will be observed, were deemed by the H 2 100 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. Commissioners to include trials by court-martial), having thus been carefully examined in detail, the Commissioners proceeded to give the general results : " The total number of deaths caused by those engaged in the suppression amounted to 433, and the total number of dwellings burned to 1, 000. ' ' With respect to the number of persons who were flogged, it is impos- sible to state it with any degree of accuracy: 60 appear to have been flogged by order of courts-martial ; one woman was sentenced to be flogged at Morant Bay, but Colonel Nelson refused to confirm the sentence. The number flogged without a court-martial was much larger. The whole number subjected to the degrading punishment of martial law, we think, could not have been less than 600. " The excesses in this respect, the Commissioners state, were to be ascribed, however, not to the military, but to the civil authorities. And only at one place, and under civil authority, was there anything like torture. ' ' The mode of inflicting the punishment at Bath calls for special notice. It was ordered by a local magistrate, after a very slight investigation, and frequently at the instance of book-keepers and others smarting under the sense of recent injury. At first an ordinary cat was used, biit afterwards, for the punishment of men, wires were twisted with the cords. " The Commissioners truly said it was painful to think of this, but it is pleasing to think that it occurred only at one place, and that it was wholly unauthorised by any military officer, and that it was the only instance of any- thing that can be fairly called deliberate cruelty, or the use of torture, which occurred during martial law. Like- wise, it is to be observed, that it was done by men smarting under the sense of recent injury, and that in general, the punishment of flogging was never inflicted at all, except for the possession of plunder, or some act of injury. The most important matter, of course, was the infliction of capital punishment. As to this the Commissioners said " We carefully examined into every case in which it was alleged that a, life hart bfrn token." REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 101 " Comment has already been made on cases of destruction of life which happened under exceptional circumstances. The conduct of the black soldier on the road between Manchioneal and Port Antonio caused the death of ten persons without any inquiry or proof of guilt. The excuse of dread of the soldier, made by those who witnessed his acts and might have interfered, cannot be allowed." The Commissioners stated that 354 persons had been executed under sentence of court-martial, and made par- ticular comments on the courts-martial. " Comments on the Courts-martial. The number of executions by order of courts -martial appeared to us so large that it became very important to ascertain, as far as we were able, the principles upon which the members constituting the Courts acted, and the sort of evidence upon which their decisions were pronounced. ' ' It would be unreasonable to expect that in the circumstances under which these Courts were assembled there should be the same regularity and adherence to technical rules which we are accustomed to witness in our ordi- nary tribunals; but there are certain great principles which ought under no circumstances to be violated, and there is an amount of evidence which every tribunal should require before it pronounces a judgment which shall affect the life, liberty, or person of any human being. " In order to ascertain whether these principles have been adhered to, and whether in all cases this necessary evidence has been required, we have carefully read the notes of the evidence given before the different Courts, upon which notes the confirmations of the sentences were pronounced. " In the great majority of the cases the evidence seems to have been un- objectionable in character, and quite sufficient to justify the finding of the Court. It is right also to state, that the account given by the more trust- worthy witnesses as to the manner and deportment of the members of the Courts was decidedly favourable. " But we think it right also to call attention to cases in which either the finding or the sentence was not justified by any evidence appearing on the face of the proceeding." They then mention some of these cases. In several cases depositions or confessions constituted the only evi- dence. In three cases besides that of Gordon, which made four, they reported "The evidence appears, to us to have been wholly insufficient to sus- tain the findings." 102 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. A fifth is afterwards mentioned, in which they said " The only offence charged or proved was the use of the following ex- pression by a convict in one of the cells of the Kingston Gaol : ' I have seen too much gun. Creoles are fools. If it [meaning the present rebel- lion] had been in Africa we would have known what to do immediately. If I had but five of my countrymen I would make you see something. If I had a sivord I would kill Mr. Shaw and Mr. Norton. The black man should rise like St. Domingo to take Jamaica from the Buckras.' " But they candidly added " The above observations are founded exclusively on the proceedings themselves, which were submitted for confirmation to the commanding officer, and on which it would appear that his confirmation of the sentence was founded. "It is right, however, to make mention of the fact stated by some of the officers who appeared before us, that other evidence than that which appears on the face of the proceedings was sometimes given, and that the commanding officer was aware of such additional evidence having been given. " We ought also to mention that in one of the cases above referred to, where the evidence upon which the prisoner was convicted appears most objectionable, the guilt of the prisoner was incidentally proved in the course of our inquiry. " So that it by no means resulted from the statement of the Commissioners, that improper or insufficient evidence had been received that, therefore, the parties were innocent, or not deserving of death ; on the contrary, they clearly imply that it did not necessarily follow, and in some cases they positively state that it was not so. Still less did it follow that the trials were not honest, and there is not a word in the report to imply that in any one single instance it was otherwise. The general result of the report as regarded the infliction of death appeared to be this : Total number of prisoners executed, 439 ; of these, 354 were executed by sentence of court-martial ; and of those, in the great majority of the cases i.e. in all but some few specified probably in 350 out of 354, "the evidence was unobjectionable in character and quite sufficient to justify the finding of the Court." So REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 103 that in these cases, at all events, it may be fairly inferred that the men were worthy of death, and had actually taken part in the rebellion. And these are nearly all the deaths with which even the officers could be charged ; for of the remaining 80 or 85 it will have been seen, upon the'previ- ous statement of the Commissioners, the greater number were killed by soldiers almost always by black soldiers not only without orders, but contrary to orders, and gene- rally in the absence of officers. And of the few if any who were shot with the sanction of officers, either without trial or without being taken in arms or in the act, not a single instance is mentioned by the Commissioners in such terms as to convey the least idea of any want of honesty or ill-feeling, with the exception of one case they expressly reserved for further inquiry, and of another case that of a summary execution by the Provost-marshal, which they declined to enter into, became it was to be the subject of criminal prosecution, clearly implying that in no other case did they suppose such a course could possibly be taken. Their language upon this case is most important for many reasons : " It will doubtless be observed that a great deal of evidence, laid before us with a view of proving the use of undue severity during the existence of martial law, has reference to the conduct of Mr. Gordon Ramsay, the Provost-marshal. As he is now about to take his trial on a charge of murder for an act done by him while he held that office, it was not thought right by any of the parties concerned in the inquiry that he should be asked any questions, the answers to which, or a refusal to answer which, might prejudice him on his trial. It will be obvious that for the same reason it would not be right for us to make any remarks upon his conduct. It is due to those under whom Mr. Ramsay acted to state that no complaints of the cruelties now charged against him, although stated to have been wit- nessed by many, were made to those who placed him in authority, and had the power, and undoubtedly would have had the will, to deprive him of that authority, if such cruelties had been shown to have been com- mitted." It may, it is hoped, be safely inferred from this that- had it occurred to the Commissioners as possible that the 104 HISTORY OE THE JAMAICA CASE. Gfovernor or military commander, or a member of any court-martial, could be tried for murder, for the execution of any one under sentence of court-martial, a similar course would have been followed, and a similar reserve adhered to. And it may unquestionably be assumed that it never occurred to the minds of the Commissioners that either the Governor or military commander would ever be charged with criminal responsibility for the act of the Provost-marshal, done without their knowledge, and not done in pusuance of any order or authority from either of them. With that exception, not a single instance of the infliction of death is mentioned by the Commissioners in terms im- plying any notion of serious moral culpability, or crimin- ality on the part of the officers, though many such cases are mentioned as regarded the men. As regard the military commanders, they mentioned no order given in terms of censure or reprobation. As re- garded the Governor, a single order of his was mentioned, and that was merely to engage bodies of rebels. Incidentally the report showed, as did despatches and documents, that the trials by court-martial took place entirely under military authority, and military responsi- bility ; for they mentioned that in cases of prisoners sent into the declared district for trial, for seditious publications, prior to the rebellion, and not connected with it in any way ; the general on his own responsibility, refused to try them. The Commissioners, in expressing their general opinion, evidently considered that the Governor was only responsible for the maintenance of martial law, not for the execution, and they only conveyed a very guarded and moderate dis- approval of its discontinuance, or rather its full exercise for the whole of the period. With that exception, they not only expressed no disapproval, but the strongest approval. They summed up^their conclusions thus, as to the rebellion, and the necessity for martial law : REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 105 " That the disturbances had their immediate origin in a planned re- sistance to lawful authority. That the causes leading to them were mani - fold ; but that the principal object was the obtaining of land free from payment of rent, and that some were animated by feelings of hostility towards political and personal opponents, while not a few contemplated the attainment of their ends by the death or expulsion of the white inhabitants of the island. That though the original design for the overthrow of autho- rity was confined to a small portion of the forest, yet that the disorder spread with singular rapidity over an extensive tract of country ; and that such was the state of excitement prevailing in other parts of the island that, had more than a momentary success been obtained by the insurgents, their ultimate overthrow would have been attended with a still more fearful loss of property ; and that praise is due to Governor Eyre for the skill, promptitude, and vigour which he manifested during the early stages of the insurrection, to the exercise of which qualities its speedy termination is in a great degree to be attributed." But then they thought : " That by the continuance of martial law in its full force to the extreme limit of its statutory operation the people were deprived for a longer period than necessary of the great constitutional privileges by which the security of life and property is provided for. " This, it will be seen, from the premises on which the report was founded, was the only part of the case for which the Governor could be responsible, and it was entirely a matter of opinion ; or of judgment, to be formed upon matters of opinion, at the moment ; and, therefore, as a difference of opinion, or error of judgment, is no ground for censure, the Commissioners put it in the most guarded way, not so much as a censure or condemnation, as a mere expression of opinion : "We have now narrated the means used for the suppression of the insurrecetion, and have commented on the conduct of some of those engaged in the suppression. " The number of persons concerned in the original outbreak, and in the deeds of violence by which it was accompanied and followed, was un- doubtedly large ; the number also of those who availed themselves of a time of disorder to plunder their neighbours was far larger ; but the punishments inflicted seem to us to have been far greater than the neces- sity required. Nor can we shut our eyes to the fact that among the suf- 106 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. ferers during the existence of martial law there were many who were neither directly or indirectly parties to the disturbances which it was the object of those placed in authority to suppress. ' ' "We fear that this, to a certain extent, must even be the case when the ordinary laws, framed for the suppression of wrong-doing and the pro- tection of the well-doer, are for a time suspended. "The circumstances which are supposed to render necessary their suspension are almost sure to be such as to excite both fear and passion ; and some injustice, and we fear some cruelties, will be certain at such times to be perpetrated ; but we think that much which is now lamented might have been avoided if clear and precise instructions had been given for the regulation of the conduct of those who were engaged in the suppression ; and every officer had been made to understand that he would be held responsible for the slightest departure from these instructions. It does not seem reasonable to send officers upon a very difficult, and perfectly novel, service without any instructions, and to leave everything to their judg- ment. "But as under any circumstances, however carefully instructions may be prepared, and however implicitly obeyed, the evils of martial law must be very great, we are driven to consider whether martial law might not have been terminated at an earlier period than the expiration of the thirty days allowed by the statute . " We know how much easier it is to decide this question after than before the event, and we are aware, too, that sometimes the success of the measures adapted for the prevention of an evil deprive the authors of those measures of the evidence they 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. It was not till the 21st of October that the Maroons marched to Torrington, which evidently was the stronghold of the insur- gents, and which place, from the marks of preparation found there, it had been intended to defend. " After, however, firing a few shots, they fled at the approach of the Maroons, and on the following Monday, the 23rd, Paul Bogle was appre- hended with his few remaining followers, and on the 24th was conveyed as a prisoner to Morant Bay. "From this time it must have been clear to all that the rising in St. Thomas-in-the-East was put down, and that the only thing to be feared was simultaneous risings in other parts of the island. The ques- tion to be considered in deciding upon the conduct of the Government is, not whether such risings were in fact likely to take place, but whether the Government, with the information then in their hands, had reasonable grounds for apprehending that they might take place. " It will be seen that they were receiving almost daily reports from REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS> 107 different parts of the island ivhich must have led them to the conclusion that considerable danger of such risings existed. They could not at the time investigate, as we have, the grounds on which those reports rested. " They were forwarded by the custodes of different parishes, in whom the Government was bound to place a certain amount of confidence ; and they would have incurred a serious responsibility if, with this information before them, they had thrown away the advantage of the terror which the very name of martial law is calculated to create in a population such as that which exists in this island. " But there was a course which might have been pursued by which that advantage would have been secured, and yet many of the evils ordi- narily attendant upon martial law avoided. "On the 30th of October it was formally stated by the Governor that the wicked rebellion lately existing in certain parts of the county of Surrey had been subdued, and that the chief instigators thereof and trans- actors therein had been visited with the punishment due to their heinous offences, and that he was certified that the inhabitants of the districts lately in rebellion were desirous to return to their allegiance. " From this day, at any rate, there could have been no necessity for that promptitude in the execution of the law which almost precluded a calm inquiry into each man's guilt or innocence. Directions might and ought to have been given that the sittings of courts-martial should be suspended, and the prisoners handed over to trial by the ordinary tribunals." This was the opinion of the Commissioners, of whom two out of three were lawyers, sitting on an inquiry some months after the rebellion had been put an end to, and arriving, upon mere inquiry, at a conclusion adverse to that formed at the time, by the Governor and his advisers, including not only the Commander-in-chief, but a military officer of experience sent round to examine into the state of the island. To test the weight or value of this opinion, let it be supposed that the Governor, con- trary to the advice of the military commander, had ter- minated martial law earlier, and that then the rebellion had broken out again, where would his justification have been ? And would not the very men who now censure him for acting on the advice of the military commander have asked him what excuse he had for acting contrary to the advice of 108 HISTORY "OF THE JAMAICA CASE. those most competent to advise him ? It has been seen that Lord Russell, .at the very time at the head of the Go- vernment, had distinctly laid it down in the Ceylon case that, as to the circumstance of martial law, the governor could not do wrong if he acted in accordance with the ad- vice of the military commanders those best qualified to advise him. And in the present case a Royal Commission, composed chiefly of lawyers censured the Governor for having done the very thing which an eminent states- man had declared he ought to do; or rather, they did not censure him, but they laid the ground for a censure, by pronouncing a disapproval of the course he had taken. This, however, was the only point on which there was any disapproval of the conduct of the Governor keeping martial law in full force for the lohole period of its duration. They thought " That by the continuance of martial law in its full force to the extreme limit of its statutory operation the people were deprived for a longer than the necessary period of the great constitutional privileges by which the security of life and property is provided for." It may indeed be questioned whether this involved any censure of the Governor, for even assuming that martial law was continued in full force longer than necessary (which would be a matter of military judgment, depen- dent upon military exigency), it did not follow that the full exercise of martial law during that period was a mat- ter for which he was responsible. As already mentioned, the execution of martial law is a matter entirely for the mili- tary authorities, and under the control of the Commander- in- Chief, who, it will have been seen, exercised an inde- pendent control over it. At all events, therefore, the Governor could not be involved in the final conclusions of the report : " That the punishments inflicted were excessive. "1. That the punishment of death was unnecessarily frequent. REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 109 "2. That the floggings were reckless, and at Bath positively bar- barons. " 3. That the burning of 1,000 houses was wanton and cruel." That it may not be supposed, that, in the few cases which the Commissioners thought open to exception, there was any reason to suppose the parties were innocent, it may be as well to give the only instances they furnish of sentences disproportionate to the finding : "In one of these cases, the only offence charged or proved was the use of the following expression by a convict, in one of the cells of the Kingston gaol : < If it (meaning the present rebellion) had been in Africa, we would have known what to do immediately. If I had but five of my countrymen, I would make you see something. If I had a sword, I would kill, &c. The black men ought to rise like St. Domingo, to take Jamaica from the buckras. ' It appears that one person was executed upon proof that he was advising the rioters on the 7th of October how to act, and that he resisted the police and assisted in handcuffing them on the 10th. Ano- ther, on proof that he had resisted the police on the 10th, having in his hand a cutlass and big stick, and that he made use of the following ex- pression : 'You were taking my name down on Saturday; now I can take my revenge. If we did not consider one thing, we would take your head off.'" These were the only cases mentioned by the Commis- sioners in which the facts given in evidence were stated, and it will be seen they certainly do not show anything like innocence. In several cases where the Commissioners properly pointed out that the evidence was objectionable in point of character, as where persons were convicted only upon depositions or confessions, they say nothing as to the facts stated, or whether they had any real doubt of the guilt of the parties, or any real reason to believe them in- nocent. And it is most remarkable that, notwithstanding the extreme strictness of the investigations, they did not in any one single instance (except that of a woman shot by mistake) state that they had ascertained that a person executed was innocent, In four cases they stated they considered the evidence insufficient ; in several they state 110 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. the evidence was objectionable ; they express a fear that- some persons may have been executed who were not guilty of crimes ; but, after the most careful and protracted in- vestigation, they were not able to state that they had ascertained the innocence of a single individual. And even putting together all the instances they except to, on account of insufficiency or impropriety of the evi- dence, they do not in point of number amount to more than a fractional proportion of those tried by court-martial not more than ten or a dozen. So that out of 354 persons executed by court-martial, the Commissioners could not say that one was innocent, nor above four or five cases in which the evidence was insufficient, and about half-a-dozen more in which the evidence *was improper in character. So that as of these they avow that some were guilty and others may have been, it is fair to infer that nearly all probably 350 out of 354 were justly executed. The Commissioners then went on to consider the trial of Gordon by court-martial, and to express their opinion upon it : "On Saturday the 14th October, Mr. Gordon left 'Cherry Garden' to pay a short visit at Kingston with his wife, intending to return home on the following Monday, the 16th. "Amid the excitement in that town which arose on and after the 12th October, upon the confirmation of the account first received from Morant Bay, Mr. Gordon's name was quickly associated with the authors of the disturbances. His friends and relations thereupon suggested to him on Monday the 16th to retire at once, but he positively refused, and remained where he was. On the following morning, having been sought for by the police without success, he went to the house of the Major-General com- manding the troops to give himself up. There he was shortly after met by Governor Eyre and the Gustos of Kingston, and by them arrested. ' ' From Kingston he was sent by sea to Morant Bay, where he was put on shore, a prisoner, on Friday evening, the 20th October. " The next day a court-martial was sitting for trial of prisoners there, con- sisting partly of members of the legislature. Brigadier-General Nelson, however, having deemed it right that Mr. Gordon should not be tried by a court composed of persons who might be supposed to be influenced by local prejudices, adjourned that court, and another was convened, before REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. Hi which, about two o'clock the same afternoon, Mr. Gordon was brought for trial. "This court consisted of Lieutenant Brand, of Her Majesty's ship Onyx, president, Lieutenant Errington, R.N., and Ensign Kelly, 4th West India Regiment, members. The charges against the prisoner were for furthering the massacre at Morant Bay, and at divers periods pre- viously inciting and advising with certain insurgents, and thereby by his influence tending to cause the riot. "Two heads of offence were drawn up, one for High Treason, the other for complicity with certain parties engaged in the rebellion, riot, and insurrec- tion at Morant Bay. " One witness has stated that more than once during this trial, at the opening and during. its progress, Mr. Gordon made application to postpone the trial on the ground of want of jurisdiction of the court to try him, and also on account of the absence of material witnesses for the defence. ' ' The witness, however, who deposes to this, seemed wholly unworthy of credit. Neither the person who independently reported the trial for pub- lication at the time, nor the documents of the court recording the pro- ceedings and particulars of the trial itself, make any mention of such an application, one of such importance as could hardly have escaped notice. " Other persons present at the trial who heard all that passed there deny that any such application was made. "After the case against the prisoner had closed, Mr. Gordon inquired for Dr. Major, who he said could prove that the state of his health had prevented him from attending the vestry meeting at Morant Bay on the llth October. " The Provost-marshal was sent from the court to look after the Doctor, and on returning shortly afterwards said to Mr. Gordon, ' Dr. Major is not in the Bay. ' The witness Theodore Testard was then called by Mr. Gordon to prove the same fact, but he had no knowledge on the subject. "Considering the importance then attached to Mr. Gordon's absence from the vestry on the llth of October, it would have been much more satisfactory if some delay had been allowed in order that Dr. Major might have been sent for to speak to the state of his health on that day. " The evidence taken consisted of documents and oral testimony. There were some depositions which would not be admissible according to the rules which regulate English courts, civil or military." But that only amounted to this, that such evidence would not be admissible before a court of law or a regular court-martial, and the Commissioners did not remember that it had been held by a court of law, that all the regular rules of evidence do not bind even regular courts-martial, 112 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. but only such as are substantial. They themselves state that the question as to the courts-martial would be rather as what was substantial. Moreover, though they went on to state that two witnesses " were sworn and examined," they omitted to mention that these were the two principal witnesses, and that they expressly proved that Gordon had, in the presence of the leaders of the massacre, incited the negroes to kill the whites if they did not give up the back lands. The Commissioners strictly scrutinised the nature of the evidence against Grordon, and the character of the trial. As regards the former, they were careful to point out the objection to depositions : "William Eobertson Peart and James Fyfe Humber, whose joint state- ment was read, deposed to the matter spoken by Mr. Gordon at the Vere meeting in September. Both of these persons were in Jamaica at the time of the trial, and might have been summoned to give oral testimony. Charles Chevannes and George Thomas might also have been called as wit- nesses, as they were living in Jamaica. " But it was forgotten that they might be in Jamaica, and yet not available for a week ; and if the execution could be delayed a week, probably it would not have been justifiable at all. Many passages in the despatches show the diffr- culty of travelling in Jamaica. " The written statements of these four persons had been taken in the absence of Mr. Gordon, and were inadmissible as proof against him, according to the rules that regulate evidence in English courts, civil or military. " ''With regard to the written statements of J. Anderson, James Gordon, and E. Gough, they were not legal evidence ; but those persons wer sworn and examined at the trial." That is to say, their oral evidence was strictly and legally admissible ; and it would perhaps have been better had the Commissioners added that theirs was the principal evidence against the accused ; and better still COMMENTS ON REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 113 had they stated what it was ; Anderson having stated that he had heard the prisoner say to some of the leaders of the insurgents that, if the whites did not give up the back lands, they must all die, and Grough having proved more recent communication between the prisoners and others, and his circulating, by means of their agency, an inflam- matory address, telling the blacks to be up and doing. This was proved by strict legal evidence. The Commissioners did not advert to the nature of the evidence, and their chief statement would lead any one to suppose that the depositions of these three witnesses proved the evidence, whereas their evidence was first taken orally in the regular way, and then their depositions were read, to explain, to check, or confirm their oral evidence ; according to the practice in our criminal courts a practice found so con- ducive to justice, that, shortly before these events, an Act had been passed, called by the name of Mr. Denman, for the express purpose of facilitating it, and removing the difficulty arising from the objection in the case of deposi- tions not taken in the presence of the accused, an objection substantial where the witnesses are not produced, and examined, but only formal where they are. That Act provided " That a witness may be cross-examined as to previous statements made by him in writing, or reduced into writing, relative to the subject-matter of the proceeding, . . . provided always that it shall be competent for the judge at any time during the trial to refuse the production of the writing for his inspection, and he may thereupon make such use of it for the purposes of the trial as he may think fit." (Act to Amend the Law of Evidence, of May, 1865.) That is, any statement of the witnesses rendered into writing, which would include a deposition, whether or not taken in the presence of the prisoner, which is only material when the witness is absent, so that the objection 114 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. taken by the Commissioners was entirely technical. The Commissioners went on to state : " The printed placard headed 'State of the Island' is a duplicate of that which was posted upon a tree, in August, at Morant Bay, the original draft of which was proved to have been in the handwriting of Mr. Gordon." The effect of that placard, as already stated, was that the blacks should be up and doing, and should act as well as speak. " Five witnesses were sworn and examined for the prosecution and one on behalf of the prisoner." And then, having omitted all mention of the principal evidence against Gordon, they went on to state : " The printed placard headed ' State of the Island ' is a duplicate of that mentioned as posted upon a tree, in August, in Morant Bay, the original draft of which was found to have been in the handwriting of Mr. Gordon. The evidence, oral and documentary, appears to us to be wholly insufficient to establish the charge upon which tbe prisoner took his trial." That is, that the prisoner had incited the insurgents to rise and murder the whites ; which was confirmed, not only by the irregular evidence, but by the terms of the placard circulated by means of the leading insurgents, and urging the blacks to be up and doing, and to act as well as speak. However, without in the least noticing what the evidence was, the Commissioners reported their opinion upon it thus : " The evidence, oral and documentary, appears to us to be wholly insuf- ficient to establish the charge upon which the prisoner took his trial." Upon which these observations naturally arise. In the first place, the finding was, if not altogether wholly irre- levant, at all events entirely inconclusive, as to the mate- rial question to be considered, viz., whether the court- martial might not honestly, and not unreasonably, have COMMENTS ON REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 115 considered the evidence sufficient ? For it is well known that there is nothing upon which various minds so differ, as upon the effect of circumstantial evidence ; and it is further obvious that in such a peculiar case the effect of it must a good deal depend upon its connection with other facts of a general nature, notorious and undoubted, and of which formal evidence could hardly be expected in an irregular trial under martial law ; so that not only legally, but morally and substantially, the real question was, what the court-martial might not unreasonably believe ; not what might appear to the Commissioners chiefly lawyers, accustomed to conclusive evidence, and formal proof of everything^-to be sufficient. The Commissioners, however, seem to have considered that they were sent to retry the case of Gordon, whereas what they had to inquire into was the conduct of those responsible for his trial and exe- cution, a very different matter indeed, which would de- pend, not on their opinion of the evidence, so much as its natural effect on the minds of the parties responsible. And it is conceived that they were entitled to the judg- ment of the Commissioners upon the question whether the court might not have honestly deemed the evidence suffi- cient ; as to which the Commissioners expressed no opinion, though it is manifest, from a close attention to the terms of their statement on the case, that if they had expressed such opinion, it would have been that the finding of the court was justified. This necessarily follows from the effect of the statements they make, though they refrained from stating it distinctly, and though the language they used would naturally lead the public to suppose they considered it not warranted by the evidence, and held the accused to. be innocent. For they had already stated that the charges against the prisoner were for conducing to the massacre by inciting the insurgents, and using his influence with them, which tended to cause the outbreak ; and then they stated that two charges were drawn up one high treason, and the i 2 116 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. other complicity in the massacre ; upon which they re- present the trial to have proceeded : and finally, they state that the evidence was insufficient to establish the charge upon which he took his trial : that is, the formal charge, as drawn up, viz., high treason, and actual complicity in the particular massacre. The Commissioners said, in effect, that the evidence was insufficient to establish that. Not that it was insufficient to establish the real substantial charge of having incited the insurgents to insurrection, and so of having caused it. This would be quite consistent with his not having designed the particular massacre, or a massacre on that particular day and hour. And it would also be consistent with the absence of evidence of an actual treasonable design, though, as the effect of a local rising, if successful, would be to cause a general rising, the result of which would be to exterminate the whites, and thus to deprive the Crown of the colony, such a design might be inferred. So that the insufficiency of the evi- dence to establish either of these charges could not by any means show its insufficiency to establish the real substantial charge, that of having incited to the insurrection. And it strangely escaped the notice of the Court that, as Gordon was tried under martial law, he was tried by military law, which makes it a capital offence tc incite to sedition. And this omission of any notice of the real charge was the more remarkable and the more to be regretted because their special finding on the case clearly and conclusively showed that, in their view, Gordon had incited the insurgents to insurrection. They stated, however, as to the result of the trial, as follows : "He was found guilty, and sentenced to death, after six hours' trial. After having approved and confirmed the finding and sentence, Brigadier Nelson forwarded the proceedings of the trial to General O'Connor, under cover of a despatch, dated 21st October, 8 p.m. In this despatch he states, for the information of the General, that he considered it his duty fully to approve the finding, and confirm the sentence ; and adding, ' To- morrow being Sunday, and there existing no military reason wh;y the COMMENTS ON REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 117 sentence should not be deferred, I have preferred to delay its execution till Monday morning next, at eight o'clock.' " So that the Commander-in-chief, who, it will be borne in mind, as already has appeared from the despatches, was on bad terms with the Governor, concurred in the necessity as well as the justice of the execution, and, of course, its necessity for the suppression of the rebellion, the leaders being still at large, and the negroes still in armed rebellion. The Commissioners italicised the word " military/' which seems to have suggested that the meaning was that there was no military reason for the execution, and accordingly that was the ground taken on the prosecu- tions. But it is evident that the point was that there was no military reason why the execution should not be de- ferred until the Monday, and which, coupled with all the rest, and the approval of the military authorities, implied that at that time the execution would be required by military reasons : not, of course, on the grounds of such a present necessity as alone justifies a killing at common law, but on the ground of the general necessity for putting down a rebellion, by the terror inspired by the execu- tion of the person believed to have been its author. At this time, it will be observed, the active leaders were at large and the negroes were still actually in arms, as the Commissioners had already stated. The Commissioners did not set forth the letter of the mili- tary commander ; which was most important with reference to the responsibility afterwards cast upon the Governor in relation to the case, as it showed distinctly that the trial took place entirely under the military direction and authority'. Neither did they notice two most important pieces of evidence with respect to the case : one in a letter of General O'Connor to the Governor (contained in one of the earlier despatches), directing his attention to the case of (*<)>-< Ion, and suggesting that there was an important 118 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. piece of evidence against him (the inflammatory address already more than once alluded to) ; and the other in the evidence of Colonel Nelson, who states that Mr. Eyre, when he sent Gordon, desired that he Colonel Nelson as the military commander, would examine the evidence and see if there was sufficient to warrant the prisoner's trial ; and if so, and if he considered it proper to do it, and not otherwise, then to place him on his trial. Taken by the light of the two most important pieces of evidence, the terms of the military commander's despatch to his superior officer, the Commander-in-chief, were doubly important. It ran thus : ' ' After six hours' search into the documents connected with the case of Gordon, I found that I had sufficient evidence to warrant my directing his trial. I prepared a draft charge and pieces of evidence for the court. It assembled about two oclock p.m. this day, and closed its proceedings after daylight. The President having transmitted them, I carefully perused them. The sentence was death. I considered it my duty fully to approve and confirm. I endorse the whole of the proceedings of the court for your information, as you may desire to see what evidence led to the conviction of so great a traitor. I have not furnished any report to his Excellency the Governor, because, as his Excellency is now at Kingston, I apprehend all my report should be made through you as my immediate commanding officer. Hoping to give you approval," &c. Now, the letter was most important, as conclusively showing that the trial was conducted by the military authorities entirely on their responsibility, without refer- ence to the Governor, either as to the charge, the evidence, the finding, or the sentence, he being at a distance during the trial, and taking no part in the direction of the pro- ceedings, nor having any report made to him of them. The Commissioners went on : ' ' The whole proceedings of the court were enclosed for the General's information. They reached him on the 22ud, and he, after reading them, to the members of the Executive Committee, sent them to Governor Eyre, with a request that he would return them as soon as possible. The pro- ceedings were returned to the General the same day by Governor Eyre, who wrote at the same time that he fully concurred in the justice of the sen- COMMENTS ON REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 119 tence and the policy of carrying it into effect. On the same day he wrote to General Nelson, ' I quite concur in the justice of the sentence, and the necessity for carrying it out. ' "This letter reached Brigadier Nelson before the execution of Mr. Gordon. "On the 23rd October Brigadier-General Nelson sent a despatch to Major-General O'Connor, announcing the execution of Mr. Gordon at 7 '10 a.m. that morning. " On the 24th October General O'Connor transmitted, in letters to the Secretary of State for "War and to the Military Secretary at the Horse Guards, a copy of Brigadier-General Nelson's despatch reporting the trial, sentence, and execution of Mr. Gordon, and in both letters he adds, 'A copy of his Excellency the Governor's letter approving the same is enclosed, in which I fully coincide.'" Here again the Commissioners omitted to mention, that General O'Connor afterwards stated that he considered tlie case called for prompt and decided action. (Minutes of Evidence, evidence of General O'Connor.) So that he not only concurred with the Governor as to the justice, but as to the necessity for the execution, and its immediate execution ; which, indeed, was indicated by the tone of his letter to the Governor, sending the proceedings and desiring their instant return. It is the more to be re- gretted that the Commissioners omitted all mention of these important matters, since they went to the very root of the imputation afterwards cast upon the Governor with reference to this painful case. However, even taking the case as stated by the Commis- sioners, it appeared that the Commander-in-chief of that day an experienced military officer and an able military commander who acted under him, neither of them respon- sible to nor reporting to the Governor, but entirely inde- pendent of him, and reporting, not even to the Colonial Office, but to a different department of State arrived at a clear conclusion that the evidence was sufficient to establish that Gordon was guilty of the crime of insurrection ; that is, as the military officers evidently understood from their manner of stating the charge, guilty of inciting the insur- 120 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. gents to insurrection, and so guilty of the insurrection to which they were thus incited, and which well might be, although he had no actual complicity in the particular in- surrection, in the sense of intending it on that particular day and hour ; and, when carefully considered, the finding of the Commissioners merely came to this, that he was not implicated in it in that sense, leaving his substantial guilt entirely unaffected. Whether this made the least imputa- tion even upon the military commanders, still less upon the Governor, the reader must consider. To recur to the general findings of the Commissioners : that the punishments inflicted were excessive, and espe- cially that the punishment of death was unnecessarily frequent. These statements, it will be observed, are the general conclusions, and they are so general as to afford no guide as to the responsibility of particular parties, for which reference must be had to the particular statements of the Commissioners. And it was here that the gravest injustice was done to the Governor, who, it was supposed, was responsible for everything done by everybody, whereas, upon a close attention to the particular statements of the Commissioners, it will appear that he was responsible for none of the excesses. In the first place, with reference to the most important matter, capital punishment, the Commissioners stated that ' ' The total number of deaths caused by those engaged in the suppression were 449 ; of those, 354 were tried by court-martial, and of these, in the yreat majority of cases, the evidence was unobjectionable in character, and quite sufficient to justify the finding of the Court. " So that it is manifest that in the more serious sense that is, in the sense of execution of persons probably or even possibly innocent there were no excesses in the trials. This being so, the question naturally arises, in what sense, or upon what data the Commissioners used the COMMENTS ON KEPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 121 phrase at all events as regarded capital punishment that " the punishments were excessive," and " that the infliction of death was too frequent ? " They must have meant by this something different from the continuance of the trials and executions, for that had already been dealt with. The Report affords no grounds or data from which the sense in which they used the word " excessive" could be inferred, except, indeed, as to flogging, for which they gave intelli- gible reason ; that it was inflicted recklessly. But there is no such statement as to capital trials and executions ; on the contrary, there is a statement that in the majority of the cases the trials were satisfactory, which implies that the parties were guilty. It is, then, not to be supposed that they meant that the inflictions of capital punishment were excessive, in the sense that the persons were innocent, and it is to be presumed, therefore, that they meant that too many persons were executed who were guilty. It is to be lamented that they did not express themselves more clearly, for their expressions were popularly understood very differently ; and it makes all the difference in the world in considering whether too many persons were executed; to consider whether they were innocent or guilty. The phrase "excessive punishment" itself strictly implies guilt rather than innocence ; and so the phrase " too frequent infliction of capital punishment," it is absurd to speak of the excessive or too frequent execution of the innocent. But the popular interpretations are not always accurate, and even in Parliament the Commissioners were supposed to have reported to the effect that reckless hang- ing went on irrespective of guilt or innocence ; whereas when the statements of their report are closely scanned, they amount merely to this, that some guilty persons were executed by martial law who might have been executed by ordinary law. It is plain, at all events, that this is the only sense in which their Report would be consistent with the facts they state, and, therefore, they must be supposed 122 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. to have been their meaning, a very different meaning indeed from what was put upon it at the time. It results from the Report that there were no serious excesses as regarded the great majority of the cases of capital punishment by sentence of courts-martial, comprising 354 out of 439, and the excesses under this head must be sought in the smaller portion of the total number, being the num- ber of 80 or 85 summarily shot in the earlier part of the period of the duration of martial law that is to say, in the first rage of pursuit, when, as has been seen, black soldiers shot many negroes, for the most part without orders, and in the absence of their officers, in one instance ten at a time. It is obvious that in this number the ex- cesses must chiefly be found so far as regards capital punishments ; and it is equally manifest that the Governor, who was not in the field, and gave no orders to commit such acts, could not be personally responsible, according to the statements of the Commissioners, since the atrocities took place generally in the absence of the officers. Thus, therefore, it is found that, as regards the excesses under the more important head, on the one hand, they are reduced to a comparatively small number as regards the whole, and the Governor and military commanders are entirely, and the officers to a great extent, released of all responsibility. Nay, further, it will appear that, even as to the actual perpetrators of these excesses, they had at least the excuse that these sad excesses occurred during the first hot rage of pursuit, and under the excitement caused by actual massacre. For these excesses it was obvious the actual perpetrators alone could be liable. In expressing an opinion that the executions were ex- cessive and too frequent, it is to be inferred, therefore, either that the Commissioners chiefly alluded to the sum- mary military executions which took place, for the most part, without orders or in the absence of officers, during the first hot rage of pursuit, or, if they alluded at all to COMMENTS ON REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 123 the executions during the latter portion of the period, which took place under court-martial, they must have meant, as they had already reported in effect, that, in almost all the cases the sentences were just, but that there was no necessity for anticipating the sentences of ordinary law : or, in other words, that the number of summary trials and capital sentences was greater than the degree of the danger rendered necessary, even assuming the guilt of the parties executed. The practical importance of this it is manifest is inconceivably diminished, when it is assumed, as the Commissioners seem to have assumed, that the men were, for the most part, justly executed ; and it never appears to have occurred to them that if, indeed, the men were guilty of participation in the rebellion, then the very number convicted showed the degree of the danger. But, apart from that, the question, it is manifest, as to the propriety or reasonable necessity for these executions, assuming their justice, would depend mainly upon the reasonableness of the view of the danger, and this again would depend upon the number of the insurgents, because upon that would depend the number still at large, who had neither surrendered nor been apprehended, and who were still in rebellion, though not in open rebellion. As to these considerations, of which it will be seen the Com- missioners had taken no notice in their conclusions or expression of opinions, as to the continuance of martial law, they had stated in effect that some thousands had been entirely engaged in the insurrection, of whom it is manifest the greater number were still at large and had not surrendered, notwithstanding the amnesty, on which they mainly founded their opinion, but which only applied to those who surrendered. Much also must depend upon the general condition of the colony, and the general disposition of the black population ; and, as to this, there was a great deal of evidence adduced by the Governor before the Com- missioners, which it will be seen they made allusion 124 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. to in their report, and of which the effect was stated by him in a letter to the Secretary of State which it is proper here to insert, as it reached the Secretary of State before the report, and was before him at the time he prepared his despatch, quoting the general conclusions of the Re- port, and grounding thereon his recall of the Governor. The letter was of this nature. Mr. Eyre had laid before the Royal Commissioners an immense mass of documentary evidence, comprised of statements made to him as to the condition of the colony and the apprehensions entertained of a rebellion ; but some parts were rejected as not being strictly legal evidence : and he embodied the result in a despatch to the Secretary of State, which is here inserted : because the question as to his responsibility for the measures taken must depend upon the general belief. He first gives general reasons for his belief as to the formidable character of the rebellion : ' ' I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your various de- spatches relative to the late rebellion, asking for further information and explanations to enable her Majesty's Government to understand the nature and extent of the outbreak, the state in which the other districts of the island were at the time, and the grounds for continuing martial law, and trials by military tribunals, after the rebellion had been got under control. " In order to arrive at a just conclusion upon these points it is neces- sary to premise, ' ' First. That the negroes from a low state of civilisation and being under the influence of superstitious feelings, could not properly be dealt with in the same manner as might the peasantry of a European country. "To produce any adequate effect upon such a population, numbering as they do some 350,000, as against about 13,000 whites who are scattered amongst them in isolated and unprotected positions, and widely separated from each other, it was of paramount importance that punishment for such serious offences as rebellion, arson, and murder should be prompt, certain, and severe. It could only be made so by the continuance of the military tribunals until all the parties captured as principals had their cases inquired into and dealt with summarily. " It is true that within a week from the first outbreak the rebellion was got under control, but a large number of the instigators of and actors in it STATEMENT MADE BY MR. EYRE. 125 were still at large, scattered throughout an area of between 400 and 500 square miles of mountainous and woody country.* "To have withdrawn martial law, and have substituted the delay and uncertainty of civil tribunals before the chief rebels were punished, would have done away with the impression which it was so necessary at the time to make upon the minds of the negroes throughout the island. "Secondly. That as a race the negroes are most excitable and impulsive, and any seditious or rebellious action was sure to be taken up by and extend amongst the large majority of those with whom it came in contact. This was abundantly proved in St. Thomas-iu-the-East, the wave of rebellion having extended from Morant Bay, twenty miles to the north west (be- tween Arntully and Monklands) in two and a half days, and from Morant Bay, forty miles to the east, and north-east as far as Long Bay, in three and a half days ; at Monklands, seventeen miles (north-west) from Morant Bay, Mr. Patterson, Justice of the Peace, was obliged to fly for his life, and his place was plundered on the 14th October. At Mulatto River, thirty-five miles (north-east) from Morant Bay, Mr. Hinchelwood, Justice of the Peace, was obliged to fly for his life, and his house was burned on the 13th October." He gave reasons for difficulty as to express proof of the apprehensions entertained : " Thirdly. That as a race the negroes are most reticent, and it is veiy difficult to obtain from them full or specific information upon any subject ; hence it is almost impossible to arrive at anything like correct details of their plans or intentions. Even where they wish to give warning to per- sons they desire to save, it is usually done in an ambiguous manner. Thus about July last year (when the Government was expecting an out- break near Black River), Dr. McCatty was warned by several persons to g<> away as ' something was going to happen, that they were sure that nothing would trouble him, but Massa had better take nigga advice to go away. ' He could elicit no further information. The rising did not take place, because the Government was on its guard, and took precautions in time to prevent it. Other similar instances might be given. It will be easy to understand from this trait in the negro character, that a conspiracy may exist, and even have extensive ramifications, without the Govern- ment or any white individual being in any way aware of it. "Fourthly. The negroes exercise a reign of terror over each other, * No notice whatever is taken of this, the most important feature in the case ; at all events, no answer was ever afforded to it. It must be borne in mind that the Commissioners in their Report stated in effect that some thousand* had been actively engaged in the rebellion, of whom the greater part were still at large. 126 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. which deters people from giving information of any intended outrage, or from assisting in any way to frustrate its perpetration. * "The man Adam Smith, who gave information of the contemplated rising near Black River last August, has been poisoned, and Dr. Me Catty certifies that he found large quantities of arsenic in his stomach and intes- tines. "John Tranlayson, who gave information of illegal drilling in the Blue- fields district was beaten by his companions for doing so. " Several black persons are stated to have been killed by the rebels during the late rebellion for having refused to join them against the whites. " In many instances they were compelled to take oaths to join them under threats of having their heads cut off. This threat was also used to the police at Stoney Gut by Paul Bogle on the 10th October ; it was used to Thomas McCoy by Paul Bogle on the llth October, and to many others at different times and places by him or by other rebels. "Mr. Hinchelwood, Justice of the Peace, states that Edward Minot, beadle of St. Mary's Church, warned him to go away at once, stating, ' I hear those people will have your head, and though plenty of we negroes would help you, not one of we dare lift our hand for you. ' "Many other similar cases have come to my knowledge, and there is little doubt that such was and is the general feeling throughout the coun- try, even amongst the best disposed negroes. There were several gratify- ing instances in which individual negroes showed fidelity to their em- ployers, and aided in saving their persons and property, but there is none of their attempting to stop the progress of rebellion or to resist it ; and this fact, I think, shows plainly how very general was the feeling in favour of the rebellion : those who did not take an active part in promoting it, must either have sympathised with it, or at least have stood passively by without attempting to arrest its progress. "Fifthly. Not only was the rebellion universal throughout St. Thomas-in-the-East (a parish which alone contain 215 square miles), and endeavouring to extend itself in the adjoining parishes of Portland, St. David's, and Port Royal, in all of which there were plenty of sympathisers ready to join at a moment's notice, but I had good reason to believe that disloyalty, disaffection, sedition, and rebellious intentions existed in almost every other parish in the island. " Sixthly. The number of troops in the whole island was only 1000 ; of these about 500 were engaged in suppressing the rebellion, and occupying * Evidence was given or offered on oath before the Commissioners of all or most of the particular matters here mentioned ; and though in some instances legal objec- tion to evidence may have precluded actual proof of the facts, as facts there can be no doubt that the information was received and believed, and that is all that is material. But most of these things were proved. STATEMENT MADE BY MR. EYRE. 127 the parishes of St. Thomas-in-the-East, Portland, St David's and part of Port Royal, upwards of 500 square miles in extent, with a population of fully 40, 000. "The other 500 troops were employed in garrisoning and protecting New Castle, Up Park Camp, and Kingston. " Even when the additional troops arrived from Barbadoes and Nassau there were altogether only some 1700 to garrison and protect a country 140 miles long, and 50 broad, containing an area of between 6000 and 7000 square miles, much of which consists of mountain fastnesses or dense jun- gles with few facilities for intercommunication. " He avowed fully and freely the view he had formed as to the necessity for deterrent measures. " Bearing all these circumstances in view, and considering the frightful and irretrievable ruin which must inevitably have overtaken the Colony if the rebellion had been allowed to gain head or to extend itself, I consider that I was fully justified in continuing martial law and trials by military tribunals, until all the principal instigators of or actors in the rebellion were dealt with, and the rebellion itself so crushed out as to deter any attempt at a similar outbreak elsewhere. "The success which has attended my measures is in itself a justifica- tion of them, and to those who are inclined to cavil at their severity, I would say, that in such a case instant and just punishment became even- tual mercy, the deserved death of the few saved the lives of the many. I would ask also what would have been thought or said of me had I lost the colony, or occasioned the massacre of thousands through any delay or hesitancy on my part to accept the responsibility which the emergency necessarily imposed upon me. " From what has already been said, it will easily be understood that how- ever strong was my own conviction of the universality of seditious and rebellious feelings throughout almost the entire island, it is far from being an easy matter to bring forward proof sufficient to produce a similar convic- tion in the minds of persons living at a distance, unacquainted with the country and the negro character, and unable to appreciate the value of all the little incidents or circumstances which to my mind indicated a great and eminent danger. " Mr. Eyre appealed to the authority of all the leading persons in the colony.* * All of whom gave evidence before the Commissioners on oath, and testified to the effect here stated ; that is, partly upon matters of fact, and partly upon informa- tion and belief formed upon all the circumstances within their observation. Many of them, from their nature, were not susceptible of actual legal proof. 128 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. ' ' I cannot more clearly describe the nature and character of these cir- cumstances and incidents than I did in a message to the House of Assembly, in which I informed them that ' the grounds upon which my opinion was based, consisted partly of oral information from gentlemen or others con- nected with the different districts, partly of information contained in pri- vate letters to the Governor, and in letters to the members of the Executive Committee or to other gentlemen of position, which were shown to the Governor, partly of representations from custodes or magistrates of the alarming state of their districts, of seditious and threatening language being openly indulged in, of threatening letters, of night meetings of the peasantry, of unsanctioned drilling being carried on in various places, of statements of the insecure and unprotected state of the parishes, of appli- cations for troops, for men-of-war, for arms, for extra police or constables, for formation of volunteer corps, &c. , &c. ; the whole tending to show that sedition and rebellious intentions were widespread through the land, and that in most of the parishes the residents who were best able to judge of the temper and feeling of the peasantry around them, were in a state of great apprehension and alarm.' " Of course it must necessarily be more or less a matter of opinion, as express proof of a conspiracy could scarcely under such circumstances be obtained. ' ' It could not be expected that there should be any documentary evi- dence amongst the negroes themselves of a conspiracy to overthrow the Queen's authority, and to massacre the white and coloured people of the island, nor could it reasonably be supposed that people like the negroes should have established any very complete organisation, or have made any perfect arrangements to act in combination. ' ' But that there was a certain amount of organisation and combination, and an intention to act simultaneously, or nearly so, in many of the parishes, I cannot doubt ; nor do I doubt but that the object was to exter- minate the white and coloured classes and obtain possession of the country for themselves. However wild and visionary such a . scheme may appear to Englishmen, it must be borne in mind that the success which attended the Haytians against the French, and more recently of the St. Domin- gans against the Spaniards, afforded examples and encouragement which, from the vicinity of those republics to Jamaica, were constantly before the peasantry of this country ; and these examples lost none of their force from the presence of many Haytians at Kingston living in wealth and idleness, and from the manner in which such examples were expati- ated upon by designing demagogues and agitators, who, like G. W. Gor- don, did not hesitate to tell the peasantry of this country that ' they should do as the Haytians had done.' " STATEMENTS MADE TO MR. EYRE. 129 Mr. Eyre went on to detail a mass of information in support of the opinion he had formed. "There are many points connected with the late rebellion which have been greatly misrepresented or misunderstood in England. " I have collected various reports, statements, or depositions from all parts of the country, from custodes, magistrates, inspectors of police, clergymen, and other persons of position, influence, and intelligence, as well as some statements or depositions from persons of humbler position. The whole constitute a mass of information of a most important and valuable charac- ter, and will well repay a careful and attentive perusal. ' ' They indicate the opinions arrived at by those most competent to form a just judgment with regard to recent events, and in many cases they exhibit the grounds or circumstance upon which those opinions are based. Taken separately and alone, each would be but the view of an individual, but read in connection with each other, these documents represent the feelings and convictions of the large majority of the respectable inhabi- tants of this colony, and possess a value and weight which cannot be ignored. " They will fully remove the erroneous impressions which I have alluded to as having been entertained in England, and they will place before the British public many facts and circumstances not previously known, but having a powerful bearing upon the character of the rebellion, and the pro- priety of the steps taken to quell it and prevent further outbreaks. " I have not had time to thoroughly examine, analyse, classify and report upon all the very voluminous documents now forwarded, or the many facts or incidents which they disclose, but I have endeavoured, as far as time has permitted, to put before you in the shape of extracts some of the more important passages in reference to points which are either greatly misunderstood, or imperfectly or not at all known." Mr. Eyre stated facts to show that though there was a planned rebellion (which the Commissioners had in effect reported), that its outbreak had been precipitated. He re- ferred to documents showing this. "As far as I am able to form an opinion, I believe the outbreak at Morant Bay to have been a premature development of an intention to rise which was much more general, and had a later period (supposed to be the then coming Christmas) fixed for its being carried into effect. The readiness with which it was taken up through an extensive tract of country, the sympathy and exultation openly displayed in other districts when the tem- porary success of the rebels was first made known, and the disappoint- ment and sullenness exhibited, when later intelligence announced *hat the K 130 HISTORY OF THE JAMAICA CASE. rising was suppressed, all indicate a state of preparedness for rebellion on the part of a large portion of the population of the island. " But even in St. Thomas-in-the-East, premature as the outbreak is believed to have been, there is abundant proof that it did not arise out of the immediate circumstances of the moment, but was to a certain extent premeditated and predetermined. * ' ' Henry Theophilus Bogle, nephew of Paul Bogle, states that about two weeks before the rebellion, meetings were being held at Stoney Gut, and oaths administered, also that captains were appointed with about fifty men each. "Julius Hebbert states that meetings were being held and oaths taken not to divulge the secrets heard. " Policeman William Fuller states'that on the 10th October, when trying to execute a warrant on Paul Bogle, at Stoney Gut, Captain Grant called out 'Men,' and immediately 300 came out from the cane piece and the chapel, armed with cutlasses, spikes, bayonets, knives, and sticks ; that they insisted (under the alternative of taking off his head), upon his taking the oath because he was a black man, or as they stated it, ' skin for skin ;' that Paul Bogle administered this oath on the Bible, that it was, ' So help me God, after this day I must cleave from the whites and cleave to the blacks;' that he saw the oath administered to several that joined Paul Bogle the same oath. "Rural constable Jonas Foster states, that on the 10th October, when trying to execute the warrant upon Paul Bogle at Stoney Gut, the latter cried out ' Men, help here, turn out, men ;' that thereupon Captain Grant sounded the shell and the drum beat, and Captain Grant said, ' Troops, turn out;' that over 300 men came out of the cane piece and chapel, armed with cutlasses, sticks, and lances. That subsequently Colonel Bowie or- dered the men to go out to drill, and that three gangs turned out with drums playing and shells blowing. That several men had the oath administered to them and were then given each a dram of rum and gun- powder to drink. "On the morning of the llth October, prior to the insurgents going to the parade (where the Court-house was) all the following circumstances took place : Alexander Brown, a volunteer, states that being sent out to collect straggling volunteers, he was met by a mob of rebels, who cried out ' The volunteers have joined the buckra, kill them ;' that he was attacked, knocked down senseless, and his wrist dislocated, before they went to the parade. Robert Evans Jones, boatswain of Morant Bay jail, but a policeman in charge of Morant Bay police station at the time of the disturba