THE JAMAICA OUTBREAK.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 7, Issue 381, 31 May 1866, Page 1

THE JAMAICA OUTBREAK.

(From the Home Hews, 26th March.} The Royal Commission of Inquiry commenced their labours on January 25, and were expected to terminate their sittings on March 7. They have examined a great many witnesses, and among them his Excellency Governor Eyre, whose testimony was looked forward to by the whole country with great anxiety. So far, however, the oral and documentary evidence he has given before the commission has not advanced him one step beyond the position in which he was placed by his despatches to the Secretary of State. The commission have declined to allow the barristers, Messrs Gorrie and Payne, to cross examine witnesses. These gentlemen appeared on behalf of Mrs Gordon and others. The occurrences of the first three days, that is outrages committed by the negroes, have been fully established, with the exception that many of the stories about the mutilation of the bodies of the murdered gentlemen have not been supported—such, lor instance, as the Baron Kettelholdt’s brains having been scooped out, mixed with rum, and drunk by some of the rebels, the ripping up of the bowels of Mr Price, and

the cutting out of the tongue of the Rev. Mr Herschell. The witnesses appearing before the commission in the first instance, were those for the most part who testified to the measures of reprisal adopted by the Government. They brought to light some rather startling facts, among others that the whips used for flogging rebels were made partly of pitmo wire , that with these instruments of torture women were flogged, that in seme places people were banged and shot without any form of trial whatever, and that the provost-marshal and others were apparently guilty of acta of wanton cruelty. The Attorney-General, in his evidence before the commission, having referred to the circumstances under which the news of the disturbances first reached him, and the authority under which martial law was proclaimed in the island, went on to speak as follows:—

“As to the outbreak* my own opinion is that there was a great deal of personal illfeeling in St. Thomas-in-the-Fast, arising from the different views—parochial, political, and otherwise —among the gentry, which by sympathy was communicated to the lower orders ; then there was a law suit between the baron and Mr Gordon, and in my opinion that was the spark that set the fire blazing. I believe there has been a general discontent throughout the whole island for the last four or five years among the people, and disaffection to the government —not disloyalty to the Crown, but discontent with their betters as to their condition.”

Mr Jackson, a stipendiary magistrate of St. Thoraas-in-the-East, stated in Ids examination that the people in St. Thomas-in-the-East were most assuredly dissatisfied with the administration of justice. The dissatisfaction, in his opinion, was well grounded. Whenever there was for hearing a case in which the evidence unfavorably affected parties possessing the sympathy of the local magistrates, the latter prevented justice being done, by declining to attend in numbers sufficient to form a court. The complainant, after attending day after day, and seeing no hope of obtaining a hearing, eventually absented himself, and the charge fell to the ground through want of evidence. Similar testimony was given by Mr Justice Ker. The arrest of Provost-Marshall Ramsay on the charge of murdering a man named Marshall, by ordering him to be hanged for grinning while he was being flogged, lias taken place. The Times correspondent thus describes the arrest:

A warrant for the apprehension of Mr Gordan D. Ramsay was issued by Mr Russell, registrar of the Court of Chancery, aud a magistrate of the county in which Spanish Town is situated, at the instance of the friends of the deceased man, aud upon a information sworn by Mr Lake, lately reporter of the Colonial Standard, who was present when the execution took place. Mr Ramsay was arrested the same afternoon, and was taken, not before the magistrate who had issued the warrant, but before another justice, named Dr. Land, who immediately admitted him to bail, requiring only bis own recognizances in £4uo that of two sureties in £2OO each, and merely binding him over to appear on the 6th of March next, without fixing any place at which he is to appear. The course which was adopted by Dr Land has excited a good deal of observation. The report founded on the voluminous evidence taken before Sir H. Storks and his colleagues will ba a work of time and the royal commissioners are not expected back in England before the middle of May. Upon the whole, it is believed that the fact of unnecessary cruelty on the part of the authorities is established b j the evidence.

The special commission of oyer and terminer, sitting at Kingston for the trial of political prisoners, has disposed of the charges against several persons. Mr Sydney Levieu, the editor and proprietor of the County Union newspaper, who had been convicted of tbe publication of a seditious libel in the form of certain articles in that journal, has been sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment, and Thomas Harry, a shoemaker, and the Rev. J. H. Crale, a Baptist minister, who had been found guilty of the use of seditious language at the Underhill meetings, have each

been sent to prison for six weeks. The Rev. Edward Palmer, also a Baptist minister, in connection with the society in London, and Goldson, an ex-sorgeant of police, have been sentenced, the former to 14 days, and the latter to two months’ imprisonment.