The Sun.
London, England, 1865-12-05 00:00:00

rHE SUN, - LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, DECEMBER 5, lEEE.

some respects, always give the accused the benefit of
the doubt, and require that a man should be proved
guilty before he is condemned. Under these cir-
cumstances Governor EYRE, and the other gentle-
men who have succeeded in restoring tranquillity
in Jamaica, have good reason to complain of the
manner in which they have been treated in this
country. Starting from no other ground than the
supposed virtues and sufferings of the black race,
a body of public men have industriously set them-
selves to work to denounce the Governor of Jamaica
and his associates as wholesale and remorseless
murderers. They judge, say they, by their own
words, but they refuse to believe those
words when they speak of barbarous murders,
unprovoked rebellion, and an extended and
dangerous conspiracy. Surely if these critics
accept the Governor's account as a proof of
the severe measures employed in the repression of
the outbreak, it is only just and reasonable to accept
also his positive and unhesitating statement of the
greatness and imminence of the danger? Governor
EYRE has been spoken of in terms which every
honest man will deeply regret should he be shown,
as we have no doubt he will be shown, to have mea-
sured strict justice to the rebels in mercy to the
whole of the rest of the population, black as well as
white. In any case, it can only be common
justice to suspend our judgment until much
fuller and more authentic accounts are re-
ceived from different parts, and before, at
public dinners, and from the pulpit of the people,
we condemn a man of known courage and proved
humanity as a coward and a murderer ? We
have to put against this not only the outline of the
story given by the Governor himself, but the ad-
dress presented to him by the two branches of the
Jamaica Legislature. Are we to believe that a
large and mixed body, men of various ranks and
various opinions, would have passed an address
expressing, in the strongest terms, their approval
of the Governor's conduct, and their sense of the
danger from which his promptitude and firmness
had delivered them, if he had been guilty of whole-
sale, illegal, and unwarrantable slaughter ? The
cruel and unprovoked murder of Baron von KETEL-
HOLDT and the other gentlemen at the Court-house
are entirely disregarded by these critics. We hear
a great deal of the so-called murder of Mr. GOR-
DON, but nothing about the undisputed massacre
at the Court-house. The public feelings are worked
upon by quotations from the last utterances of the
condemned, and pictures of the grief of their fami-
lies,- but we do not hear so much eloquence about
the father clasping his little child amid the scene of
fire and destruction, while his grief and the
boy's alarm drew tears from the brave men
who would not weep for themselves. We get no
eloquent delineations of the feelings of the poor wife
crouching under the flooring and hearing the
negroes laughing overhead, and boasting that they
had chopped her husband up into pieces so small
that his wife wouldn't know him ! Yet
orator and preacher might, if they chose,
take their text from such pictures as
these. The severity of the measures adopted for
repression may indeed be painful to our feelings,
but so are the details of an ordinary execution, and
every exercise of the power of law creates a
domestic tragedy. Neither can we condemn the
judges for the number of the culprits who
suffered being greater than the number of
victims on the mere ground of discrepancy of num-
bers alone, since, if half a dozen men unite in mur-
dering one or two men among ourselves, they do
not escape condemnation because they are more
numerous to punish. Colonel GAWLER addressed a
calm remonstrance to those whom he describes as
singularly eager to ride roughshod over Governor
EYRE before the essential details of the Jamaica
outbreak are exhibited fully and fairly to the nation.
He says that Governor EYRE has done all that he
could do during the trying and absorbing events in
sending home an outline of the story in a
clear and straightforward manner. " The details
of proof, he adds, are yet to come. Why should
we not with responsive, manly forbearance, wait
for them?" Colonel GAWLER asserts that during
h:s intimate acquaintance with Mr. EYRE, in his capa-
city as Governor of South Australia, he found him
a man of stedfast integrity and earnest but
judicious humanity towards all men, and espe-
cially towards uncivilised men. " With this
opinion of him, it appears to me that his
severity towards a small number of persons will
soon be proved to have sprung from motives of
high and far-seeing humanity towards the whole
population, white, half-caste, and black, of
the island for which he is responsible."
Colonel GAWLER says very justly further
on that extreme cases not only justify extreme
preventive measures, but they render half-
way proceedings criminal, and he refers to the
Bristol riots some thirty years ago as an instance
of that mistaken humanity which occasions even-
tually so much loss of life and terrible suffering.
It deserves to be remembered amid the tumult
that a certain party has succeeded in raising re-
specting Governor EYRE that the first impression
created on hearing the news was that the autho-
rities had been too remiss at the first alarm in
adopting repressive measures. It may not be in-
opportune at this moment to remember the
outcry which was raised about the burning of
Kogosima a year or two since, and the very
different light in which it appeared when the full
details were sent home. Whatever may be the
differences of private or individual opinion, it can
certainly be no more than an act of common fair-
ness to suspend judgment until we have the com-
plete and authentic account, while it is manifestly
unjust in the extreme to denounce an English gen-
tleman of tried character and responsibility as a
reckless murderer, while the parties who are best
qualified to judge are thanking him for the preser-
vation of their lives and property.

How TO MAKE A GOOD SOLDIER.—The question
is, How are soldiers to be made to take a pleasure
in their work ? " A little leaven leaveneth the whole mass :"
is a small proportion of men in any regiment, squadron
troop, or company, could be made up of men who, by study
and application at the regimeatal school, were qualifying
themselves for commissions, they would become influential
for good over all their companions. For these, proper
schools should be established, as in France, and a
certain number of non-commissioned officers in each regi-
ment should, if they wished, be allowed to go to the Military
College, and there prepare themselves for the higher ranks
of the service. Those who were wanting either in the
primary education or the will to go through this ordeal
should be taught trades and handicrafts which could put
money into their pockets while serving, and give them tho
means of earning their bread honestly when their period
of soldiering was at an end, besides making them useful
both to themselves and to the army on a campaign. Let
a man who was sensible that he had not the qualifications
for a not-2ommissioned officer feel that he was bettering
his condition more and more the longer he remained in the
service, and depend upon it there would not be such a list
of deserters sent up by every country post to Scotland-
yard as there is at the
present day.--Dickens's "All the
Year Round."

FALL OF A RAILWAY VIADUCT. The viaduct on
the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway between Brockholes
and Thongsbridge, near llolmfirth, fell on Sunday morning.
It consisted of 13 arches, and was 200 yards long. The
traffic is, of course, entirely suspended. The loss to the
company will be great. The cause of the disaster has not
been ascertained, but it is supposed the foundations had
been weakened by a rivulet which runs through the middle
of the arches.—Leeds Mercury.
It is stated, upon official authority, that Winder
is to be put on trial for alleged atrocities upon Union Fir:-
sonars of war at Andersonville. The case will probably
be tried in the course of a month.

LA TEST INTELLIGENCE.

(REUTER'S TELEGRAM S.)

BELGIUM.
THE KING OF THE BELGIANS.
BRUSSELS, DEC. 5.

The Moniteur Belge publishes a bulletin, dated
Laeken, 9 o'clock last night, stating that no change
has taken place since yesterday in His Majesty's
condition. The bulletin is signed by Dr. Wimmer
and Dr. de Roubuix.

the property of the late Mr. G. W. Gordon, has
been arrested and hanged. Mr. Samuel Clark has
also been executed."

It was expected that the rebel Haytian general,
Salnave, would arrange matters amicably with the
British authorities at Cape Hayti.

Dinner to Mr. Thomas Hughes, M,P.

A public dinner was given to Mr. Hughes last
evening at the Bridge-house Hotel, London-bridge;
the chair was filled by Mr. Charles Buxton, M.P.,
and among the other gentlemen seated at the prin-
cipal table were :—Sir Fowell Buxton, M.P., Mr. C.
Neate, M.P., Mr. Doulton, M.P., Mr. E. F. Wilson,
F.R.S., Mr. A. Macmillan, &c. Over 200 of the
constituency of Lambeth assembled on the occasion,
and passed an agreeable evening. The dinner vas
an excellent one, and the more serious proceedings
were enlivened by a selection of vocal music very
creditably performed, under the direction of Mr. W.
H. Hook. When the loyal toasts and " The Army,
Navy, and Volunteers" had been duly honoured, the
chairman proposed " The health of Mr. Hughes, the
guest of the evening." In doing so he complimented
the electors of Lambeth on their having returned
that hon. gentleman as their representative. He had
known Mr. llughes a long time, and he could assure
them that the longer his constituents knew him the
better they would like him. Mr. Buxton next ad-
dressed himself to the affairs of Jamaica. The ques-
tion was, had the outbreak been suppressed with
needless and shocking cruelty, or, on the contrary,
was it the fact that the tremendous severity which,
by Governor Eyre's own admission, had been exer-
cised, was justified by what had been spoken of as
the " extreme peril of the hour ?" That was a mere
question of facts and dates, and we need turn to
nothing whatever except the official despatches of
Governor Eyre and his colleagues. He affirmed, and
leaning himself on Governor Eyre's despatches, he ut-
terly defied contradiction, that when their severities,
or, as he called them, their atrocious cruelties, were
committed, there was not the least shadow of justi-
fication for them, upon the ground that at the time
there was any apprehension whatever for the safety
of the colony for any further outbreak en the part
of the negroes. Having recapitulated the occur-
rences in Jamaica as they have been stated in the
official documents, the hon. gentleman, amid cries
of " Question," " Chair," " No," " Hear," and
manifestations of impatience, brought his remarks
on the subject to a close by expressing his opinion
that what had been done by the whites in Jamaica
was an atrocious as any of the acts for which we
execrated the memory of such men as the Duke of
Cumberland in days gone by. He thought the Li-
beral party ought to clear the fame of the country
from the stain which rested upon it, as far as could
be now done, by demanding a most rigid inquiry
into what had taken place in Jamaica. The hon.
gentleman concluded by stating that he heartily re-
joiced to see men like Earl Russell and Mr. Glad-
stone at the head of the Government. Mr. Hughes,
lin returning thanks, said that, however grateful he
might be, and he was very grateful for their kind
reception, he must feel himself in some little diffi-
culty on such an occasion ; for he could not forget
that his constituency were taking him entirely on
trust, as far as his power to represent them properly
in Parliament was concerned—that all their hearty
greeting was given him in respect of services which
had yet to be performed. However, he trusted that
when he should come back to them, to give an
account of the manner in which he had performed
the trust they had reposed in him, they might then
be able to receive him as enthusiastically, and to
feel that they had not been mistaken altogether in
their choice. The hon. member expressed his belief
that the present was a critical time, but one pecu-
liarly favourable for progression by the Liberal
party. They had now a veteran reformer at the
head of the Government, and the manner in which
the war in America had been brought to a close
showed how admirably representative institutions
worked when tried on the broadest and most com-
prehensive scale. He did not believe that the present
Government meant to play false with Reform ; for
when put upon their choice as to which section of
the Liberal party they would recruit from, they had
chosen from the most advanced and vigorous section
of that party. He had known Mr. W. E. Forster
for many years, and he believed that hon. gentle,
roan would not have joined the Government unless
they had resolved that the dreadful story of Jamaica
should be sifted to the bottom. As regarded Reform
Mr. Hughes said it was not likely the Government
would go anything like so far as he should like to
advance in that direction ; but he was ready to ac-
cept a half loaf, and he believed they would bring
in a really genuine Reform Bill, such as all the
most determined reformers would be justified in
accepting. Referring to the late Premier, the hon.
member observed that Lord Palmerston was a tho-
roughly representative Englishman. Mr. Hughes's
speech appeared to give great satisfaction to the
company. Mr. Neate returned thanks for the
House of Commons, and in doing EO expressed his
belief that the confidence of the working classes was
to be gained by worthy acts. In Mr. Hughes they
saw a man who had succeeded in securing the affec-
tion and confidence of the working classes without
ever having pandered to their delusions. Mr.
Hughes and he were members of the same College
at Oxford, and he believed they would be found
side by side in the advocacy for extension of Uni-
versity education. Mr. Neate, to the evident
gratification of the company, observed that

on such an occasion he should avoid touch-
ing on questions upon which there was likely to
be a difference of opinion even in a party com-
posed of Liberal politicians. The hon. gentleman
closed his speech amid general cheering, by express-
ing his belief that the people of England would give
a generous support to the new House of Commons.
Mr. Doulton and other gentlemen proposed or re-
sponded to other toasts before the company sepa-
rated. Mr. Toole acted as toastmaster at the
dinner.

The Insurrection in Jamaica.

-_ _-....._____

Sir Roderick I. Murchison, in a letter to the
Times, says :—As an old friend of Governor Eyre,
I beg to offer you my hearty thanks for the efficient
manner in which you have commented upon the
unfairness of those persons who have condemned
the Governor of Jamaica for his conduct in sup-
pressing the recent rebellion before they have been
made acquainted with the facts.
The career of Mr. Eyre has been one which
ought to satisfy every one who is acquainted with it
that he cannot have been either rash or cruel. As
President of the Royal Geographical Society it
has been my pleasing duty to advert to and ad-
mire his memorable and fearless expedition in
Australia, on which you have dwelt—a feat which
obtained for him one of the Royal medals, the
highest honour which geographers could confer.
Surely, after the record of his kind protection of
the aborigines of that country, as narrated by Mr.
H. Kingsley, the fair inference is that he is the last
person who would shed the blood of a negro popu-
lation intrusted to his charge if he had not been con-
vinced that he was thereby saving the lives of the
colonists, and preventing a great possession of the
British Crown from merging into a black Republic
like that of Hayti. But I write these few lines
especially to call the attention of the public to the
good deeds of Governor Eyre since he has been a
responsible officer in the West Indies.

As administering the Governments of St. Vincent's
and Antigua during seven years, and afterwards of
Jamaica, where he fulfilled ad interim the duties of
Governor, he won the respect of all classes; and it
was for these good services that the late Duke of
Newcastle, duly estimating his sagacity and judg-
ment, most justly appointed him to the office which
he now holds.

Placing, as I do, the fullest reliance on the truth-
fulness of the statements made by Governor Eyre
in his address to the House of Assembly in Jamaica,
I entertain a confident belief that he will entirely
justify the proceedings which he has taken in
promptly suppressing a rebellion which had been
long hatching, and the first outbreak of which was
signalised by the most cruel and atrocious murders
of the colonists.

William Johnson, the only brother of the Presi-
dent, died a few days ago at Velasco, Tex., in consequence
of an accidental gunshot /found.