404 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY CHAP. XX 



The reply appeared in the Pall Mall of October 

 31: 



SIR I learn from yesterday evening's Pall Mall 

 Gazette that you are curious to know whether certain 

 "peculiar views on the development of species," which I 

 am said to hold in the excellent company of Sir Charles 

 Lyell, have led me to become a member of the Jamaica 

 Committee. 



Permit me without delay to satisfy a curiosity which 

 does me honour. I have been induced to join that 

 committee neither by my "peculiar views on the 

 development of species," nor by any particular love for, 

 or admiration of the negro still less by any miserable 

 desire to wreak vengeance for recent error upon a man 

 whose early career I have often admired ; but because 

 the course which the committee proposes to take appears 

 to me to be the only one by which a question of the 

 profoundest practical importance can be answered. That 

 question is, Does the killing a man in the way Mr. 

 Gordon was killed constitute murder in the eye of the 

 law, or does it not ? 



You perceive that this question is wholly independent 

 of two others which are persistently confused with it, 

 namely was Mr. Gordon a Jamaica Hampden or was he 

 a psalm-singing fire-brand 1 and was Mr. Eyre actuated 

 by the highest and noblest motives, or was he under the 

 influence of panic-stricken rashness or worse impulses ? 



I do not presume to speak with authority on a legal 

 question ; but, unless I am misinformed, English law 

 does not permit good persons, as such, to strangle bad 

 persons, as such. On the contrary, I understand that, if 

 the most virtuous of Britons, let his place and authority 

 be what they may, seize and hang up the greatest 

 scoundrel in her Majesty's dominions simply because he 

 is an evil and troublesome person, an English court of 

 justice will certainly find that virtuous person guilty of 



