1866 THE JAMAICA COMMITTEE 409 



If you and I are strong enough and wise enough, we 

 shall be able to do this, and yet preserve that love for 

 one another which I value as one of the good things of 

 my life. 



If not, we shall come to grief. I mean to do my best. 

 Ever yours faithfully, T. H. HUXLEY. 



Governor Eyre, however, though recalled, escaped 

 condemnation on the ground that he was honestly 

 convinced of Gordon's guilt and had acted without 

 legal " malice." The Jamaica Committee raised the 

 question in Parliament, but the Government refused 

 to prosecute him for murder, though ready to revise 

 the sentences of those he had punished and to give 

 them compensation. In these circumstances the 

 House contented itself with a resolution deploring 

 the excessive punishments, and the subsequent efforts 

 of the Jamaica Committee to obtain a conviction in a 

 court of law were fruitless. The magistrates of 

 Shropshire, where Eyre was then living, refused to 

 issue a warrant against the ex-Governor; and in 

 London, grand juries ignored the bills against Colonel 

 Nelson and one of the " preposterous subalterns " in 

 1867, and against Eyre himself in 1868. The latter 

 spent the remainder of his life in retirement, dying 

 in November 1901 at the age of 86. 



Huxley was always of opinion that to write a 

 good elementary text-book required a most extensive 

 and intimate knowledge of the subject under discus- 

 sion. Certainly the Lessons on Elementary Physiology 

 which appeared at the end of 1866 were the outcome 



