EX-GOVERNOR EYRE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume III, Issue 141, 17 June 1868, Page 3

EX-GOVERNOR EYRE.

The Jamaica Committee, John Stuart Mill at their head, have again moved in this important matter. Wa quote the following from the- Daily • News: — The opportunity for a complete vindication of the honor of England was lost through the weakness of the late Government, but the condemnation of Governor Eyre is as full as a patient inquiry can make it. The Royal Commissioners have placed it on record that under his rule ' the punishment of death was unnecessarily frequent;' that ' the floggings were needless, and at Bath positively barbarous; and that the burning of 1000 houses was -wanton and cruel.' There is just as little dispute about the facts attending the execution of Mr Gordon. The two men were political enemies. Mr Eyre found his antagonist at a distance from the scene of the outbreak, at the very seat of government, seized him personally, put him on board a steamer, and made him over to a court-martial, received from it the evidence — the ' morally worthless evidence,' as the Lord Chief Justice has designated it— on which he had been convicted, and quite concurred in the justice of the sentence, and the necessity of carrying it into effect.' The Eoyal Commissioners have declared their opinion that ' there was no sufficient proof of Mr Gordon's complicity in the outbreak at Morant Bay, or of his having been a party to any conspiracy against the Government,' and the Lord Chief Justice has designated his execution a 'lamentable event.' It is for Mr Eyre to explain as he can his mode ot dealing ■with a personal enemy. For our part we are content to he of the opinion of the Lord Chief Justice: — ' No one, I think, who has the faintest idea of what the administration of justice involves could deem the proceedings on this trial consistent with justice, or, to use a homely phrase, with that fairplay which is the right of " the commonest criminal. All I can say is, that if on martial law being proclaimed, a man can lawfully be thus tried, condemned, and sacrificed, such a state of things is a scandal and a repnach to the institutions of this great and free country; and as a minister of justice, profoundly imbued with a sense of what i 3 due to the first and greatest of earthly obligations, I enter, my solemn and emphatic protest against the lives of men being thus 'dealt with in the time to come.' We trust this is the last time we may be called upon to refer to Mr Eyre or his doings. It is surely enough that under his rule the reign of the most gracious and most honored Sovereign of her age ■has been stained with atrocities such as have not been equalled since the days of the first French revolution; enough that this great and noble race, bo strong in the sentiment of justice, so full of contempt for all that is mean and cruel, has been disgraced Tt>y the perpetration'of the most horrible outrages in its name. We hope to have no more to say of him, but it must I c on condition that no attempt is made to place him again in a position where the life or liberty of a single British subject p ■ — not even a Bosjesman or a convict of Western Australia, shall be at his mercy.