The Sun.
London, England, 1866-06-20 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TimEs.—The sudden collapse of Parliamentary
Reform, and several political reputations, will be
felt by many as a relief, by some as a disappoint-
ment. There can scarcely be imagined, and cer-
tainly not remembered, a greater promise, or a
larger ambition, so abruptly terminated. The down-
fall is so great that we naturally pause to see what
more is coming. Only four months ago a new
Parliament was opened by a new Administration,
the fortunate heirs of one that had enjoyed more
than an average tenure of office, and had accumu-
lated popularity and success. The survivor of a
generation of great statesmen led in the Lords,
while the most brilliant and favoured of Peel's lieu-
tenants could count a majority of 70 in the Com-
mons. There was a large field open to achievement,
for many subjects had been held back for the better
times which, as it happened, had then actually ar-
rived, for the worst dangers of the country came
to an end with the close of the American War. Yet
it was quite evident that the new Administration
would have to hold its ground on the usual terms of
doing battle on every point that could fairly be dis-
puted. We only shared the misgivings of a multi-
tude far greater than chooses to avow itself when
this Administration elected to win its spurs in an
enterprise which had proved fatal to every Govern-
ment that had attempted it, and which 15 years of
delay, and five years of absolute pretermission, had
proved to be far from a first necessity of political
existence. Parliamentary Reform is a most weighty
matter. It must be long in preparation if its work
is to last long. It must be a creation of time, for it
proposes to bind time itself, and lay it under endur-
ing laws. It creates customs and prescriptions. It
partially supersedes a Constitution founded in the
depths of ages. It proposes a safe compromise be-
tween classes and interests that ever grow and become
more complex. We did think that this work might
be deferred till the new Administration had essayed
its power and proved the temper of its instruments.
But it was to be otherwise. The mighty birth
of matured wisdom, instead of starting out in full
panoply from the brain of its author, dropped out
piecemeal, and it was only after a severe struggle
and much loss of time that the Government sub-
mitted to the decency of a complete measure—if,
indeed, that could be called complete which was sup-
plemented with hasty after-thoughts. The discredit
of a policy, and of a measure, so utterly different
from that on which Lord Russell had earned his
good name was aggravated by the evident fact, and
the unblushing avowal, that both had the confidence
of a small section by no means entitled to this
honour. It could only be in some factious and
utterly unconstitutional character, as the organ of
democracy or some other less'definable policy, that
the member for Birmingham could have been ad-
mitted to the counsels of her Majesty's advisers.
His name did not become a tower of strength, and
it afforded a cue to the most flagrant faults of the
measure. The cautious public has tested the mea-
sure, and ascertained both the metal and the mint.
It is Mr. Bright's bill, and nothing more, and is
now thrown back on the hands of its coiner. But
even this bill, as we have maintained throughout,
might have been treated differently. While we insist
upon the duty of bringing out a complete bill, if
only as an evidence of inquiry, forethought, and
care, common sense certainly shows that every
figure, and every detail, should be left open to Par-
liamentary consideration. Mr. Gladstone appears
to have started without any clear understanding as
to the points to be insisted on, and those to be left
open ; and it is only at the last hour he has
arrived at the conclusion that the principle of the
Bill is to add so many hundred thousands to the
lower end of the electoral lists. That really would
have been a very fair question to put to the house
of Commons in the middle of February, and the
house would have been disposed to give a favourable
answer. But while this appears after all, and
after many challenges on that point, to be the real
principle of the measure, Mr. Gladstone has
actually allowed the measure to fall to the ground
without putting that question to the house, or gain-
ing one substantial advance for his bill. It is the
first duty of a Minister, though not always easy, to
bring important questions before the House, and
compel a definite answer. That much is due both
to measures and to men. The principle is either
established or rejected ; and the several parties in
Parliament are committed by their acceptance or
rejection. What has been done in this case ? By
the division of Monday night nothing, absolutely
nothing, is established, and nobody is committed to
anything, except that the rateable value is a better
basis for the franchise than the estimated rental. It
is a mere detail. There are probably few people who
have not changed their opinions on the point at one
time or another, as well they may, considering the
variety of circumstances and the changes of legisla-
tion. But it has no necessary bearing on, the only
principle now allowed to be in question-..the ad-
mission of so many thousand poor electors ; for it
would have been perfectly competent to anybody to
move that the rateable value to give the franchise in
boroughs should be £6, or ever. £5, if necessary to
obtain the required increase. The Attorney-General
could have moved this with much propriety. As
this has not been done, the enlargement of the con-
stituency has not beendefinitively put to the House.
The Opposition, therefore, cannot be charged with
refusing to enfran3hise working men. They cannot
be charged with the exclusion of a single ratepayer
from the franchise. They may even allege that they
are ready to apply the principle and the privilege of
scot and lot to the entire population of England.
They stand perfectly uncommitted—except gene-
rally to the enfranchisement of ratepayers—and
their liberality is unimpeached. They are as they
were at the opening of the session. But" a great
Government, at the head of a great party, has de-
stroyed itself as rapidly and gratuitously as one of
the City Banks was said to have done the other day.
The only result of immense labour is a suicide, of
which no better account can be given than the eccen-
tric reason for which poor creatures occasionally put
an end to themselves. Why has the Liberal Govern-
ment thrown itself over a precipice ? No honest jury
could possibly return any other verdict than that it
has committed suicide to prove estimated rental a
better test than rateable value. Such is the bright
martyrdom Mr. Gladstone has attained to. But
what a time to do it in ! If the better the day the
better the deed, we presume the worse the day the
deed. Here are the nations of Europe generally
declaring war against each other. Her Majesty,
without whom nothing can be done, and who has
both to accept resignations and fill the vacancies, is
now discharging the functions of Royalty at Bal-
moral, near six hundred miles from Westminster.
All that could be done last night was to announce the
general standstill, and promise more definite expla-
nations in a few days, when letters and answers, if
not Ministers, outgoing and incoming, shall have
had time to traverse the island to and fro. Unless
her Majesty should further shorten the very short
stay she intended to make in Scotland, two succes-
sive Cabinets will have to visit the Highlands within
ten or twelve days, at what loss and inconvenience
to the public service it is frightful to think. Then
come a few other questions. There is the Session to
be wound up. There is business that must be done,
and business that need not be done. There are also
accidents that may happen even before we get a
Government at all. If the American Civil War
gave us so much trouble, will a Germanic Civil War
be quite harmless? We are boasting our immunity
perhaps prematurely. There is one comfortablere-
flection, only one, that occurs to us, and we owe it
to Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues. They have not
been overthrown by the Opposition. They have been
slain for no principle and by no antagonist. There
is neither cause nor foe. The blow, such asit was, to
which they have succumbed was dealt by one of their
own party. If the chiefs of the Opposition come in
now, it is because they are invoked as mediators, and
called in to heal a party feud. The Government
has subsided, and: another takes its place by the
laws of succession. Not a single item of retribution
is due to the new Government, not a grudge on the
contrary all possible co-operation. The Liberals
are bound by the very terms of their own self-im-
molation to give the Conservatives a fair trial, and
certainly not to exact from them a task which, with
everything in their favour, they have found it im-
possible to bring to even a respectable end.
HERALD.—The official report of the Jamaica
Commission must be accepted as a judicial deter-

mination of an earnest and angry controversy. Be-
tween the partisans of the white and coloured popu-
lation, the Anglo-Saxon sympathisers and their
negrophilistic denouncers, the believers in the recti-
tude of their own countrymen and the unreasoning
apologists for everything done by a man with a
black skin, there was manifestly a great and impass-
able gulf fixed, which was not to be bridged over
by any ordinary means of intercommunication—at
least while prejudice was at its worst and passion
had not had time to cool. The difficulties in the
way of any generally acceptable conclusion were
smoothed by the appointment and minimised by the
constitution of the commission. Two of its mem-
bers were men trained by the exercise of judicial
functions in large centres of population, where the
slighest indication of partiality is jealously watched,
but who had, nevertheless, so borne themselves that
the faintest shadow of a shade of reproach had never
rested on their names. Mr. Russell Gurney, though
a Conservative in politics, is connected by family ties
with the denomination most interested in proving
the late Governor of Jamaica in the wrong. Mr.
Maule is a man of proved capacity and of the strict-
est impartiality, while the reputation of Sir Henry
Storks stands so deservedly high that no one would
venture to impugn the sincerity, and scarcely any
one would question the accuracy, of a conclusion at
which he had arrived ; though many thought it a
mistake to appoint a commission at all, none had an
objection to urge against the commissioners. The
announcement of their names was received as a
satisfactory guarantee that their work would be
well done, and proportioned to the confidence thus
expressed in their discretion will be the disposition
now manifested to acquiesce in their conclusions.
We may be pardoned for congratulating our-
selves upon the remarkable manner in which the
investigation the commissioners have conducted has
verified the opinions we once and again expressed
during the progress of the disturbances. They
tell us in limine that the outbreak of St. Thomas's
was no mere local squabble, begotten of a police-
man's blunder, and fomented by the folly of a few
hot-headed volunteers. On the contrary, they say
that it had its origin in a planned resistance to law-
ful authority. As usual in such cases the resistance
proceeded from many and mixed motives. Per-
sonal animosity, political rancour, and a distrust,
to some extent well-founded, of the rectitude and
impartiality of the local tribunals, all had their
share in producing the prevalent disaffection, but
the great and primal cause was a desire to btain
land rent free ; to introduce in the chief of the
West India islands the same high-handed system of
proprietorship which obtains among Australian
bushmen, American squatters, and Hibernian ad-
vocates of tenant-right doctrines. That the head-
quarters of the insurrection—the centre and focus
of rebellion—was in St. Thomas's-in-the-East, the
commissioners admit, but they also say that no
sooner was resistance to constituted authority be-
gun, than it " spread with singular rapidity over an
extensive tract of country," so that more than a
momentary success by the apostles of strife and dis-
cord would have ended in a sacrifice of life and pro-
perty which, even when hinted at in the cold and
reticent style of blue book compilers, is calculated to
make every one shudder who has heard or read of
the excesses which invariably attend the triumphs
of infuriated and exultant semi-savages. There-
fore, say the commissioners, Governor Eyre is en-
titled to praise for the skill, promptitude, and vigour
with which he repressed the outbreak in its early
stages ; for the judiciousness of his disposition of the
naval and military forces at his command ; for the
seeming severity, but actual clemency, which marked
his conduct in a position beyond expectation arduous,
beyond expression trying. So much being granted,
or rather, being established by irrefragable evidence,
it seems almost like praising with faint censure, to re-
mark, " that by the continuance of martial law the
people were deprived for longer than necessary of the
great constitutional privileges by which the security
of life and property is provided for," inasmuch as
in such extraordinary emergencies the ultimate
security of life and property can only be obtained
by the employment of the most severe and drastic
measures for the punishment of those by whom they
have been jeopardised. In the concluding sentences
of the report the commissioners condemn the need-
less frequency with which the punishment of death
was inflicted ; the recklessness and barbarity of the
floggings ; the cruelty of the indiscriminate and
causeless burning of 1,000 houses. In other words,
they approve the energy and commend the acts of
Governor Eyre, they recognise in his vigour and
promptitude the instrumentalities by which the
horrors of a servile warfare were averted ; but they
condemn the imprudent zeal, or it may be the inex-
cusable ferocity, with which some of his subordi-
nates acted. For all this the readers of our corres-
pondent's letters will have been pretty well prepared.
We have never undertaken to justify every excess
committed, every severity inflicted, by men who felt
that they had escaped indiscriminate massacre as by
the skin of their teeth, and who, in some instances
at least, were not unwilling to measure the ven-
geance they took by the barbarities which had been
practised on others, and which they were only too
certain were in store for themselves. But we have
throughout maintained the principle that if the
Government of the Queen in the colonies is to be
preserved at all, those to whose hands it is com-
mitted must receive from the home authorities a
generous and trusting support. The late leader of the
Liberal party recognised this principle thoroughly,
and carried it even to excess, as was shown in the
debates on Don Pacifico's claim, and on Sir John
Bowring's mode of coercing the Chinese for seizing
the lorcha Arrow. But Mr. Cardwell's lengthy
despatch shows that the traditions of the Nestor
of the Cabinet have not been preserved
among his colleagues and successors. The
Colonial Secretary acknowledges the impartial and
painstaking character of the commissioners' report.
He thinks highly of the candour and alacrity with
which the Governor and other inculpated parties
furthered the progress of the inquiry. He believes
in the extensive ramifications, the disloyal charac-
ter, and the ultimate objects of the conspiracy ; he
agrees that the proclamation of martial law was
wise, the resort to severe measures of repression ne-
cessary, the slightest appearance of indecision above
all things to be dreaded. Nevertheless he decides
against the continued tenure of office by the man
whom he and the commissioners alike commend.
Governor Eyre is absolved, but not reinstated. In
saving the white population, in preserving the
Queen's dominion, in putting down a formidable
rebellion, he has done well, but apparently because
he failed to abrogate martial law at the earliest pos-
sible moment he is no longer to continue Governor
of Jamaica. To some extent we must admit that
we approve of this decision. The exacerbation of
feeling is so intense, the passions excited in the re-
cent conflict were so bitter, that no one could blame
the Government for taking every possible means to
soften down the asperities of the past. The pre-
sence of Governor Eyre would, of necessity, tend to
hinder the subsidence of these feelings, as it would
keep before, and in domination over, the black popu-
rightly or wrongly, they re-
lation the man whom,
gard as the incarnation of that policy which has
scattered their dreams of a black republic and left
not a wreck behind of all the visions raised by de-
signing demagogues, and accepted as verities by
their miserable dupes. But if Mr. Eyre is to be re-
called it should be clearly understood that be is not
disgraced. If he erred in maintaining martial law
too long it is admitted that he erred from too great
anxiety to do his duty, and in consequence of ap-
prehensions which even now do not seem to have
been altogether groundless. The indiscretion of
some officers, the indecent levity of others, the need-
less seventies of a few, and the inexcusable barbari-
ties of one or two, he did not instigate, he did not
approve, nay more, of their very existence he was
not aware. For the multiplication of death punish-
ments he was not responsible, for the flagellations
he cannot be held answerable, and of the wholesale
fire raisings he was altogether unconscious. When
these excesses were brought to his knowledge, it may
well be that he refrained from paralysing his power
by punishing the only men on whose aid he could
rely, and therefore, it may be, he abstained from
such expressions of his sentiments as he would have
uttered under less trying circumstances. This, how-
ever, was one of the misfortunes of his position.
Revolutions are not made with rosewater, and re-
bellions are not put down with kid gloves. When
a handful of whites find themselves suddenly me-
naced by a multitude of blacks, when the hatred of
race is inflamed by political antagonism and per-
sonal animosity, it is almost a moral necessity that
things should be done of which calm and cool judg-
ment will disapprove. That this was in some mea-
sure the case in the Jamaica disturbances we have
always admitted ; but as we have throughout, so
do we still maintain, that, though motives of policy
may justify Governor Eyre's recall, no scintilla of
reason has been shown why he should be even tem-
porarily disgraced, or why his future preferment
should in any degree be impeded.

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