d to public
clamour. Had the agitation in Jamaica spread, and taken the form which
it easily might have taken, he would have been blamed as keenly by one
half the world if he had done nothing to check it as he was blamed, in
fact, by the other for too much energy. Carlyle used to say that it was
as if, when a ship had been on fire, and the captain by skill and
promptitude had put the fire out, his owner were to say to him, 'Sir,
you poured too much water down the hold and damaged the cargo.' The
captain would answer, 'Yes, sir, but I have saved your ship.' This was
the view which I carried with me to Jamaica, and I have brought it back
with me the same in essentials, though qualified by clearer perceptions
of the real nature of the situation.

Something of a very similar kind had happened in Natal just before I
visited that colony in 1874. I had seen the whites there hardly
recovering from a panic in which a common police case had been magnified
by fear into the beginning of an insurrection. Langalibalele, a Caffre
chief within the British dominions, had been insubordinate. He had been
sent for to Maritzberg, and had invented excuses for disobedience to a
lawful order. The whites believed at once that there was to be a general
Caffre rebellion in which they would all be murdered. They resolved to
be beforehand with it. They carried fire and sword through two
considerable tribes. At first they thought that they had covered
themselves with glory; calmer reflection taught many of them that
perhaps they had been too hasty, and that Langalibalele had never
intended to rebel at all. The Jamaican disturbance was of a similar
kind. Mr. Gordon had given less provocation than the Caffre chief, but
the circumstances were analogous, and the actual danger was probably
greater. Jamaica had then constitutional, though not what is called
responsible, government. The executive power remained with the Crown.
There had been differences of opinion between the governor and the
Assembly. Gordon, a man of colour, was a prominent member of the
opposition. He had called public meetings of the blacks in a distant
part of the island, and was endeavouring to bring the pressure of public
opinion on the opposition side. Imprudent as such a step might have been
among an ignorant and excitable population, where whites and blacks were
so unequal in numbers, and where they knew so little of each other, Mr.
Gordon was not going beyond what in constitutio