The Sun.
London, England, 1866-12-29 00:00:00

TO THE EDITOR. OF THE SUN.

Slll,—The enclosed letter from Sir John Scott
Lillie, C. 8., received by me to-day, may possibly
interest your readers.--I am, &c.,

ll.AmiuroN llumE, lion. Sec.
9, Waterloo-place, Pall-mall, Dec. 28.

" Union Club, Dec. 22.

" Sir, --I am favoured by your letter enclosing a
pamphlet, by the direction of the Eyre Defence
Committee, which contains extracts from the evi-
dence laid before the Royal Commissioners with
reference to the recent insurrection in the island
of Jamaica for the subversion of her Majesty's Go-
vernment by the negro population of that island,
numbering 350,000, while the white population did
not exceed 14,000.
From the evidence thus adduced and the pro-
clamation of Gordon (the instigator of this insur-
rection), his speeches iu the House of Assembly
and elsewhere, referring to the successful insurrec-
tion at St. Domingo, in the neighbouring island of
Hayti, which the power of the Great Napoleon
and French nation (as he reminded the blacks)
could not put down, and where atrocities of an un-
paralleled nature were perpetrated, as described by
Alison in the following extract of a letter from
Professor Tyndall, which you also enclose :
" A vast conspiracy that was productive of cala-
mities of an unparalleled nature, and that had for
its object the total extermination of the whites and
the establishment of an independent black Govern-
ment over the whole colony. . . . The explo-
sion was sudden and dreadful beyond anything ever
before seen among mankind. At once the beautiful
plains in the north of the island were covered with
fires, the labours of a century were devoured in a
night, while the negrocs, like unchained tigers, pre-
cipitated themselves on their masters, massacred
them without pity, and threw them into the flames.
• • . . The cruelties exercised on the unhappy
captives exceeded anything recorded in history. The
negroes marched with spiked infants on their spears
instead of colours ; they sawed asunder the male
prisoners, and violated the females on the dead I
bodies of their husbands.'—Alison's " History of
Europe," vol. vi. p. 104.
" If" Alison should refer in a continuation of his
history to this insurrection in Jamaica he will no
doubt give the late governor and the military au-
thorities there more credit than blame for the man-
ner in which they averted a repetition of scenes
similar to those thus adverted to, and he may add
that, if the LordLieutexiant of Ireland had followed
the example of Governor Eyre by disposing of the
Head Centre of the Fenians as the late Governor of
Jamaica did of Gordon, Stephens would not have
had the gates of Kilmainham opened with such
facility to enable him to depart for America to re-
sume his machinations for the threatened invasions
of Canada and of Ireland.
" Finding, moreover, by the evidence adduced in
this pamphlet that Gordon was in treaty with an
officer in command of an American (Confederate)
ship of war for the purchase of that vessel with all
the arms and ammunition on board, after the ter-
mination of the war with the Federal States,
and that he crowned all by a practical illus-
tration of his intentions at Morant Bay on the 11th
of October last year, when, after driving our coun-
trymen by fire from the court-house there, the in-
surgents slew and mutilated them in the most cruel
manner, as the French had been treated at Hayti,
which (as it appears by the pamphlet) had been so
frequently referred to as an example for his fol-
lowers, by which they would have no doubt profited
—had not martial law been proclaimed—this ring-
leader apprehended, tried by court-martial, found
guilty, handed over to the provost-marshal and
executed on the 23d of that month, the sentence
having been approved of by the different military
authorities in the island, and ultimately by the
civil governor, for which it appears he is now threat-
ened with indictment for murder, &c.
"If this pamphlet, has been sent to me for my
humble opinion on these facts, as having some know-
ledge of martial law, acquired under the Duke of
Wellington during the Peninsular war, and of the
common law, as a magistrate of 45 years' standing,
and I believe the senior on the bench for the metro-
politan county and city of Westminster, I can have
no hesitation in saying filet had Governor Eyre and
the military authorities acted in a less decisive
manner (assuming the foregoing facts to be cor-
rectly stated) they would have incurred a serious
responsibility by exposing the white population of
that island to atrocities similar to those thus de-
scribed by Alison as having been perpetrated at
Hayti.
" If references were made to martial law and the
dangers and confusion inseparable from war, mutiny,
or threatened rebellion, instances could be furnished
of executions, sanctioned by the Duke of Welling-
ton, and carried into effect by a provost-marshal,
without even the ordeal of a court-martial, on
charges of a far less serious nature than those for
which Gordon was tried.
" I witnessed myself, for instance, executions of
this nature during the retreat of the aPied British
and Portuguese armies towards the lines of Lisbon
in 1810—the alleged offences being that certain
soldiers had helped themselves to provisions, or
other property, found in houses which had been
abandoned by their inhabitants, and which would
have fallen into the hands of the enemy, by whom
we were closely pursued, within an hour or two
after.; suoh alleged offences might consequently
have been looked upon as more deserving of praise
than punishment. The object of the Duke was,
however, the preservation of discipline, and not to
admit of any pretext for a deviation from it ; direc-
tions were consequently given to hang these offend-
ers on the spot, to the first tree on the roadside, as
an example to others.
" Making an example of Gordon and some of his
followers was in like manner the object of the mili-
tary and civil authorities in Jamaica on charges of
a much graver nature than those thus adverted to ;
the result in one case being the salvation of Jamaica,
and in the other of Portugal, which was the prelude
not only to the final overthrow of the French army
in the Peninsula and the invasion of France by
the allied armies, but to the liberation of Europe
from the power of Napoleon, who sent more than
a million of men across the Pyrenees during that
war (from 1807 to 1814) who never returned to
France, a result effected by the aid of Great Britain,
the organisation of the Portuguese army by
British officers, its co-operation with the British
troops, the strict discipline enforced by the Duke
of Wellington, and the jadicious arrangements by
which he conducted a series of campaigns in such a

succession of years against the first marshals of
France, or, as Canning described it in a speech on
his visit to Lisbon in 1814:—' The arm of England
was the lever that wrenched the power of Bonaparte
from its basis. Portugal was the fulcrum on which
that basis moved ; England fanned and fed the
sacred fire ; but Portugal had already reared the
altar on which that fire was kindled, and from which
it mounted brightening and widening until the
world was illuminated with the blaze.'
In the attainment of such important results
many illegal and unjustifiable acts of cruelty and
bloodshed had no doubt been committed, as in
Jamaica, which would not be sanctioned by any
of our courts of law under other circumstances,
many of which I witnessed myself, after the capture
of various fortresses, by drunken soldiers who had
been for days and nights in an ungovernable state,
which the Duke of Wellington overlooked, and was
supposed so far to sanction, as such acts had been
looked upon as a reward for the dangers incurred in
the storming and capture, though such cruelties
were perpetrated not on the common enemy, but on

the uuoffending natives inhabiting such cities and
towns ; yet I never heard of any committees
having been formed of philanthropists whose men-
tal vision had been so obscured by their zeal in
the cause of humanity as to induce them to
appeal to the public for subscriptions to the
amount of £lO,OOO to enable them to com-
mence legal proceedings against the Duke of Wel-

lington for having sanctioned acts of atrocity in-
separable from the conf giOnif of war, or of threat-