The Sun.
London, England, 1866-03-03 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TIMES.—The letter of our Jamaica Correspondent,
which we publish to-day, enables us to follow the
proceedings of the Commission up to the 7th Feb-
ruary. The inquiry had then been carried on con-
tinuously for a fortnight, and, although the Com-
missioners had not economised their own labour by
sitting in separate Courts, great progress had already
been made. No less than 130 witnesses had been
examined, including Governor Eyre himself, and the
evidence, of which our correspondent furnishes a
summary, ranges over the whole period comprising
the origin and suppression of the outbreak. The
general impression it conveys is almost exactly such
as we had been led to anticipate. It leaves no rea-
sonable doubt that not only wide-spread discontent,
partly connected with agrarian grievances, but a
' mutinous spirit ripe for rebellion, had prevailed for
some time in the district surrounding Morant Bay.
Illegal drilling, especially, and the administration
of illegal oaths, seem to have been practised, and
there are abundant proofs that an " organisation"
of some kind existed among the disaffected blacks.
It is clear, moreover, that the massacre at Morant
Bay cannot be regarded as, in any sense, an unpre-
meditated erneute. The mob came down upon the
town, " armed with cutlasses, pikes, and bayonets
fastened on the ends of sticks ;" they began by plun-
dering the Police Station of the few muskets, hap-
pily useless for want of powder, that it contained,
and advanced towards the Court-house " with drums
and fifes playing." There is still a conflict of testi-
mony upon the material question whether they first
pelted the Volunteers with stones before the order to
fire. The description given by the witnesses of the
scene which followed differs little from the accounts
already published in this country. It is, however,
right to mention that, while many of the barbari-
ties attributed to the rioters are confirmed, the
alleged mutilation of Messrs. Price and Herpchell's
bodies has not been corroborated. On the other
hand, the supposition that some of the worst atro-
cities were committed by released criminals is nega-
tived by the discovery that the gaol was not broken
open until later in the evening. It has been shown
that after the massacre marauding bands scoured
the country, pillaging and burning, actually reach-
ing a point 20 miles distant from Morant Bay in one
direction, and a point 40 miles distant from Morant
Bay in another direction. In short, the formidable
spread of the disturbance is amply established, but
it has not been proved that it was the result of a
conspiracy extending beyond the parish of St.
Thomas, or that it had been concerted by Gordon.
The case of Gordon, indeed, has been postponed
by the Commissioners to a later stage of the in-
quiry, but Mr. Eyre was incidentally examined
with respect-to his own part in it, and it is due to
him that we should report, without comment, the
substance of his answers. According to Mr. Eyre,
Gordon's ordinary residence was within the pro-
claimed district, where a search was first made for
him, but, finding that he was "hiding" in Kings-
ton, the Government determined to arrest him at
all hazards. Being asked by Mr. It. Gurney what
paramount reason he had for taking this course, Mr.
Eyre appealed to the universal belief in Gordon's
guilt, to the seditious proclamations and placards
issued by him, to his notorious intercourse with the
rebel leaders, and to the confessions of some pri-
soners afterwards executed. A stronger piece of
evidence, if it be authentic, is to be found in a letter
addressed to Mr. Cardwell on the 12th of last
December by Mr. Edenborough, lately a lieutenant
in the Confederate States' Navy. This gentleman
deposes to a conversation last June between himself
and Gordon, whom he represents to have negotiated
for the purchase of a war schooner, with her arma-
ment and ammunition. No reference was made by
Mr. Eyre to this statement, which it must be con-
fessed does not sound very probable. Being requested
to state any special grounds for attributing to Gor-
don anything more than acts of a political agitator,
he pointed to the suspicious fact of the victims being
Gordon's personal enemies, while the chief rioters
were his followers, if not his friends. He failed, how-
ever to supply the missing link between direct in-
stigation of a particular outrage and the use of
language calculated to produce a state of feeling
which might lead to the outrage. No cross-exami-
nation being allowed, excepting through the Court
itself, Mr. Eyre was not pressed further at the
time on this point, nor does the rest of his evidence
thro much new light on the history of the crisis.
He adhered to his expressed conviction that Dr.
Underhill's letter, of which he entirely disclaims the
publication, had been one main cause of the disaffec-
tion. The cruelties imputed to some of the military
officers employed against the insurgents, and in
particular to the Provost-Marshal, have yet to be
fully investigated. Little sympathy can be felt with
people who wilfully expose themselves to just sus-
picion of such complicity when the peace of the
community is at stake.

THE " ANGLO-AMERICAN TIMES" ON TIIE Two
DEBTS OF THE UNITED STATES. The restored
1 Republic of North America finds itself involved
in an immense debt, counted by hundreds of
millions of dollars, and it is one of the first
aims of her statesmen to sustain the credit and
uphold the currency of the country by safely and
surely providing for the liquidation of that debt.
Vast and onerous, however, as is this obligation, it
is a " trifle light as air " in contrast with the debt
the country owes to justice—to justice incalculably
outraged for scores of years in the persons of mil-
lions of human beings—men, women, and children
—to whose very humanity even the pittance of re-
cognition has in times past been denied. Thomas
Jefferson in his time, contemplating in the hope of
its gradual diminution, the remorseless despotism of
the white man over the black, gave utterance to a
sentiment which attests his claim to the greatness
accorded him, in the declaration, " I tremble for
my country when I remember that God is just !"
Washington, Franklin, Madison, and all the
fathers of the Republic, with scarcely an exception,
shared in this sentiment, and held that the black
man's title to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi-
ness is as sacred as the white man's. Religion, with
higher authority and deeper emphasis, proclaimed the
same truth in lessons condensed to one terse indictment
by Wesley, when he anathematised " the sum of all
villanies." Yet, such was the subsequent growth
of that hated " sum " in wealth and in consequent
influence, that it subsidised statesmen, the Press,
courts, churches, theology and theological institu-
tions, and, despite the experience of the last five
years, still rules in the breasts of thousands when-
ever they are asked to recognise the humanity of
the coloured man. The sentiments of thousands
more are biassed and poisoned against the negro to
such an extent that they can scarcely think of him
free, save as an intruder upon God's footstool, on
which he has no right " between the wind and their
nobility." How pitiable still is the condition of the
millions of the coloured people now emancipated
amid the superior race that has had it "bred in the
bone" to own and to command them as absolute
.
chattels ? notany one who can reflect, instead of
sneer, upon this subject, agree with us that in
simply de-chattelizing these people the American
nation has. discharged but a portion of the sacred
claims of Justice ? Our belief is, that in days to
come the atrocity of slavery will be looked back
upon with a universal feeling of astonishment and
horror, and that the lapse of time and the march of
progress will perpetually intensify this feeling.
Our conviction is that the sooner the popular
masses and political leaders of America begin in
earnest to thoroughly wipe out the infamy resting
upon the escutcheon of the Republic for these
terrible decades of wrong, the better will it be for
the country. At present there is devolved upon the
nation a duty of the first magnitude and;most press-
ing importance—made such by the very bitternes,
of the contempt in which thousands in the North
and hundreds of thousands in the South hold the
very suggestion of the duty—which is to protect,
and shield, and strengthen the Freedman. He is to
be protected in the rights of common manhood,
amid communities that are incredulous even of the
existence of such rights. He is to be placed and
defended upon the platform of the free labourer of
the North. The benefits of education are to be con-
ferred upon him and his children. If nearly a cen-
tury of abject bondage has not entitled him to this
poor compensation, it has been earned by his. valour
in arms in behalf of the imperilled Republic. In
his present weakness, debasement, ignorance, and in-
feriority, let his needs excite commiseration, and
his virtues be the more honoured for the very
lowliness from which they have shone forth.
In saying this much for the emancipated slave,
however, we do not wish to be understood as claim-
ing for him the immediate exercise of the elective
franchise. The franchise is a privilege-- not an in-
herent right ; and should only be extended to those
classes of the community who are capable of using
it rightly. Whether the coloured man is or is not
sufficiently elevated in the scale of intelligence to
vote rightly is a question which can only be deter-
mined by those with whom he is most in contact. It
seems that President Johnson, in whose judgment
and patriotism we have the most implicit confidence
—thinks that it would not be advisable to confer
the franchise on the negro at present ; and doubtless
he has very good reasons for this conviction. One
thing is certain—the emancipated slaves in the
United States have no better friend on earth than
the PRESIDENT, who has.imperilled life and fortune
in their cause ; and we, at least, feel sure that their
interests, and the interests of the whole people, are
safe in his hands.
THE ENGLISH AND AMERICAN NAVIES.
The Daily Telegraph declares that England has
the whip hand of France and of united Europe
upon the sea, but adds, deprecatingly, that the
Englishman who thinks that the maritime superio-
rity of these little islands is secure so long as we

can defy the combined fleets of France, Russia,
Spain, Italy, and Germany, must be very ignorant
or very arrogant. There has grown up on the other
side of the Atlantic a brawny young giant—blood
of our blood and bone of our bone—who carried
with him to the rock-bound coasts where the Pilgrim
Fathers landed the same Scandinavian brood that
makes England the greatest among maritime na-
tions. Backed by the resources of a continent upon
which the Creator has lavished in matchless prodi-
gality every gift conducive to the highest civilisa-
tion, our Transatlantic sons seem animated with no
other desire, fired by no other aspiration, than to
try conclusions and measure strength with us upon
what we have hitherto loved to call our own element.
Hence the vital importance of abandoning com-
parisons with France, in order to watch with
jealous vigilance the gigantic strides made by our
American cousins within four brief years, and pur-
sued since the cessation of hostilities, nearly eleven
months ago, without suspended effort or materially
abated expenditure. It is too mush the fashion in
England, because America is a long way off, and
is to ninety-nine hundredths of Englishmen all but
a terra incognita, to think that she has nothing to
teach us. From so suicidal a delusion we shall
probably be sooner or later roughly awakened.
The pamphlets and letters upon English and Ameri-
can vessels which Mr. Donald M'Kay, a well-
known shipbuilder of New York, has recently
written, are well calculated to wound our vanity
and arouse our vigilance. With every abatement
for exaggeration, there is enough in Mr. M'Kay's
insinuation that one single vessel, the Dunderberg,
is a match for the whole English navy, to arrest
attention, if not to excite alarm. Mr. M‘Kay tells
us that at the opening of the war the American war-
navy numbered 26 stenners of 49,700 tons ; and
that at its close it numbered 558 steamers, with an
aggregate tonnage of 408,000 tons. " Out of these
558 steamers," adds Mr. M'Kay, " 200 vessels,
aggregating 241,000 tons, were built by the Navy
Department. In no country, with such limited
means, and under such difficult circumstances, has
there ever been put afloat in the same time such
an immense naval armament. Certainly it cannot
be said that in the time of trial the Navy Depart-
inent has been found wanting." We have not
space to make further extracts from Mr. M'Kay's
letters, which we heartily commend to the notice
of Lord Clarence Paget and of Mr. Reed. But in
addition to the high speed sought in American ships,
to the immense calibre of the guns they carry, and
to the ceaseless activity and enterprise of their
builders, we learn from Mr. M'Kay that our cousins
have perfected an apparatus for swinging out torpe-
does from the yardarms of their vessels to be ex-
ploded by electricity upon the decks or under the
bows of hostile ships possessing inferior speed.
Without raising sensation2l alarms, we have said
enough to indicate that neither France, Russia,
Italy, Spain, nor all those countries combined,
are the maritime competitors whom we have occa-
sion to dread.

EFFECTS OF NON-RECIPROCITY.—The Toronto
(Canada) British Whig is pathetic over the termi-
nation of the Reciprocity Treaty between Canada
and the United States. Our colonial contem-
porary discourses in the following lugubrious
strain :—" On the 17th day of March next the Re-
ciprocity Treaty ceases, and the sun of American
prosperity shines no more on our benighted Canada.
No more shall American greenbacks provide us with
the necessaries of life ; no more shall the American
Eagle take us under the shadow of his protecting
wing. The United States Senate has spoken, and
Canada's place on the map is henceforth to be a
blank. On the 17th day of March vegetation
ceases north of the St. Lawrence. Grain will re-
fuse to sprout, and potatoes and turnips will turn
into stones. The water will dry up in the streams,
and non-reciprocity, like a plague, will attack the
cattle, killing them off by thousands. The wells of
Bothwell and Enniskillon will stop their flow of oil
so completely that not even a sheriff's writ could
find an indication, and the Tecumseh will be turned
into a poor-house for the reception of destitute oil
speculators and their families. Steamboats shall
ply no longer on our waters, and the rails of the
Grand Trunk and Great Western roads will be
sold for old iron, to help to pay the war debt
of the United States. The trees shall all
disappear from the face of the country, and
Senator Sumner will be found on the last
stump, with a copy of the act annulling Reciprocity
in his hand, advocating the Monroe doctrine, and
explaining the beauties of non-intercourse, and a
high tariff. Starvation will stalk through the land
from Sandwich to Gaspe. The inhabitants will
dwindle to skeletons, and so emaciated will they
become that not even Bryan's Pulmonic Wafers,
Canadian Painkiller, nor Dr. Potts can restore their
lost animation. There will be no property holders,
no voters ; the vexed question of representation by
population will be set at rest, and the Hon. George
Brown will retire into private life. There will be no
more weddings, no whisky cocktails, no old maids,
no cigars, no bribery at elections, no Mrs. Win-
slow's soothing syrup, no babies, no lawyers, no
young ladies promenading the streets, no washing
days, no 24th of May (except the 4th of July), no
sun, no moon, no anything else. The cities of
London, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, &c., will
crumble to pieces, and Phineas T. Barnum will be
found among the ruins picking up the bones of the
inhabitants as relics for his museum. Canada will
be a wilderness to be avoided by travellers, as they
would the Sahara, and future explorers will look in
vain for any traces of past civilisation. Angry
mothers will quiet squalling babies with the threat
of sending them to Canada, and political offenders
in the United States will be sentenced to banish-
ment to this desolate region, as a punishment worse
than death. Let us be prepared, then ; let us ex-
pect our fate with becoming resignation, and show
Andy Johnson, and Seward, and the rest of them,
that Britons may be starved, but they never, never,
never shall be slaves.