JAMAICA. 



449 



tioned member of the Assembly, as one of the 

 chief instigators of the rebellion. Gordon was 

 a resident of Kingston ; he had not been absent 

 from that place during the disturbances ; he was 

 in Kingston when he was arrested ; no attempt 

 was made to disturb the peace in Kingston ; all 

 the courts were in the uninterrupted exercise 

 of their functions nevertheless, the Governor 

 deemed himself justified in ordering Gordon to 

 be brought on board the Wolverine, and in con- 

 ducting him to Morant Bay for the purpose of 

 having him there placed before the court-martial. 

 When he arrived in Morant Bay, he found as 

 he himself states in a despatch to Mr. Cardwell 

 the rebellion " crushed." The columns of sol- 

 diers who had been sent into the interior re- 

 turned, and reported that they had not met with 

 armed resistance, that they had not lost a single 

 man, but shot and hung, without the least form 

 of trial, hundreds of persons suspected of being 

 implicated in the rebellion. Notwithstanding, 

 Gordon was placed before the court-martial, and 

 found guilty. The evidence brought forward 

 against him, stated that Mr. Gordon had been 

 seen on a Sunday at a certain chapel at which 

 Paul Bogle, the so-called rebel leader, worship- 

 ped ; that somebody had said that Mr.Gordon had 

 sent word for the people of a certain district in 

 the parish to hold a meeting ; that certain pla- 

 cards in blank had been found in Mr. Gordon's 

 portmanteau; that a placard headed "The State 

 of the Island" (in which there was not a single 

 word of disloyalty or sedition), had been penned 

 by Mr. Gordon ; that he had used some strong 

 language in a meeting of the people he had some 

 weeks before addressed in the parish of Vere ; 

 and that he had written a letter to one Chis- 

 holm, advising him, with reference to the suf- 

 ferings of the people, to "pray to God for help 

 and deliverance." 



Mr. Gordon protested solemnly against hav- 

 ing had knowledge of or part in the plot. 

 Nevertheless Gov. Eyre sanctioned the finding 

 of the court-martial, and Gordon was hung on 

 October 23d. At the close of October the 

 number of those shot and hung either by the 

 soldiery without trial, or by order of the court- 

 martial, was reported as reaching 2,000. 



On November 7th the session of the Jamaica 

 Legislature was opened ; the Governor in his 

 opening speech described a startling state of 

 things. Society in Jamaica, he said, was on 

 the brink of a volcano, and had 'been so for 

 some time past, owing to the systematic political 

 agitation of which the late George "William Gor- 

 don had been the leading spirit. There was 

 not a district throughout the country, he as- 

 serted, in which disloyalty and sedition were 

 not rampant, and murderous intentions on the 

 part of the blacks openly expressed. He justi- 

 fied the extreme measures he had adopted in 

 dealing with the outbreak, on the ground of 

 the imminence of the danger. In their replies 

 to the speech, both the Legislative Council (the 

 upper Chamber), and the House of Assembly 

 (the representative branch), endorsed the Gov- 

 YOL. v. 29 A 



ernor's views on this point without the slightest 

 qualification ; but two or three days after they 

 had done so, the latter agreed to a resolution 

 calling upon the Governor to furnish the 

 House with the evidence upon which he had 

 arrived at such a conclusion. During the de- 

 bate upon the motion several members ex- 

 pressed the opinion that the House had acted 

 precipitately in endorsing the Governor's state- 

 ment, and ventured to doubt its correctness. 

 The Governor told the House, in reply, that 

 the best proof he could adduce of the truth of 

 the statement was the fact that it had been en- 

 dorsed by the House itself, but added that he 

 had been induced to make the statement from 

 information contained in letters that he had re- 

 ceived from persons of position and influence 

 living in different parts of the island, all of 

 which agreed in stating that the blacks were in 

 a very excited state, and were assuming a very 

 threatening attitude toward the whites and the 

 colored people. 



No sooner had the usual preliminary matters 

 of form been got through in the House of 

 Assembly, than the Government introduced, 

 through its organs in that body (styled mem- 

 bers of the Executive Committee), several meas- 

 ures of a most extreme character. Of these, 

 the most notable were a bill to remodel the 

 political constitution of the colony, and a bill to 

 regulate places of worship. The former pro- 

 vided for abolishing the present House of As- 

 sembly and Legislative Council, and substituting 

 therefor a single Chamber, to consist partly of 

 elected members and partly of nominees of the 

 Crown to be appointed by the Governor. Un- 

 der this measure the blacks are almost entirely 

 disfranchised, as the qualification for the fran- 

 chise is fixed at the payment of 5 per annum of 

 direct taxes, and few of the negroes are possessed 

 of sufficient real estate to be assessed at that 

 sum. The bill deprives the negroes of all 

 political power excludes them from all share 

 in the government of the country. The House 

 passed the measure without delay, and sent 

 it up to the Council, where it was pushed 

 through in several stages, after which the Gov- 

 ernor lost no time in assenting to it. The bill 

 was passed with a suspension clause that is, it 

 was not to take effect as law until the pleasure 

 of the Queen of England respecting it should 

 have been ascertained. 



The bill for regulating places of worship 

 throughout the island, raised such a storm of 

 indignation among the dissenters that the Gov- 

 ernment made haste to withdraw it before it 

 had reached the second stage in the House. It 

 provided for the registry of all dissenting places 

 of worship under penalty, and required the 

 payment of a registration tax annually. 



When the first news of the revolt of the 

 blacks arrived in England, accompanied by ac- 

 counts of horrible atrocities said 'to have been 

 committed by the negroes, the measures of Gov. 

 Eyre were not severely criticized, but this feel- 

 ing became greatly modified as the whole of 





