s.
The disturbed district was placed under martial law, and these
extemporised regiments, too few in number to be merciful, saw safety
only in striking terror into the poor wretches. It was in Jamaica as it
was in Natal afterwards; but we must allow for human nature and not be
hasty to blame. If the rising at Morant Bay was but the boiling over of
a pot from the orator of an excited patriot, there was deplorable
cruelty and violence. But, again, it was all too natural. Men do not
bear easily to see their late servants on their way to become their
political masters, and they believe the worst of them because they are
afraid. A model governor would have rather restrained their ardour than
encouraged it; but all that can be said against Mr. Eyre (so far as
regarded the general suppression of the insurgents) is that he acted as
nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of a thousand would have acted in
his place, and more ought not to be expected of average colonial
governors.

His treatment of Gordon, the original cause of the disturbance, was more
questionable. Gordon had returned to his own house, the house where I
was going, within sight of Eyre's windows. It would have been fair, and
perhaps right, to arrest him, and right also to bring him to trial, if
he had committed any offence for which he could be legally punished. So
strong was the feeling against him that, if every white man in Kingston
had been empannelled, there would have been a unanimous verdict, and
they would not have looked too closely into niceties of legal
construction. Unfortunately it was doubtful whether Gordon had done
anything which could be construed into a capital crime. He had a right
to call public meetings together. He had a right to appeal to political
passions, and to indulge as freely as he pleased in the patriotic
commonplaces of platforms, provided he did not himself advise or
encourage a breach of the peace, and this it could not be easily proved
that he had done. He was, however, the leader of the opposition to the
Government. The opposition had broken into a riot, and Gordon was guilty
of having excited the feelings which led to it. The leader could not be
allowed to escape unpunished while his followers were being shot and
flogged. The Kingston district where he resided was under the ordinary
law. Eyre sent him into the district which was under martial law, tried
him by a military court and hanged him.

The Cabinet at home at first than