i866 THE JAMAICA COMMITTEE 301 



enrolled as subscribers on either side. Mill is set against Car- 

 lyle, and to counterbalance the adhesion of the Laureate to the 

 Defence Fund, the Star hastens to announce that Sir Charles 

 Lyell and Professor Huxley have given their support to the 

 Jamaica Committee. Everything, of course, depends on the 

 ground on which the subscriptions are given. One can readily 

 conceive that Mr. Tennyson has been chiefly moved by a gener- 

 ous indignation at the vindictive behaviour of the Jamaica Com- 

 mittee. It would be curious also to know how far Sir Charles 

 Lyell's and Mr. Huxley's peculiar views on the development of 

 species have influenced them in bestowing on the negro that 

 sympathetic recognition which they are willing to extend even 

 to the ape as " a man and a brother." 



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 nian whose early career I have often admired ; but because 

 th^; course which the committee proposes to take appears to me 

 to be the only one by which a question of the profoundest prac- 

 tical importance can be answered. That question is. Does the 

 killing a man in the way Mr. Gordon was killed constitute mur- 

 der 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-sing- 

 ing fire-brand? 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 con- 

 trary, 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 



