THE JAMAICA COMMISSION.

West Coast Times, Issue 165, 29 March 1866, Page 3

THE JAMAICA COMMISSION.

The Government commission of inquiry was fully constituted early in the month, since which time there has been a calming down of the passionate resentment of the prfivloaa two or three weeks. Sir H. Storks' colleagues are' Mr Bussell Gurney, recoVder of L6ndon, and Mr" Blosset Maule, recorder of Leeds. .Both are Conservatives, and will therefore be pledged to the Tories of fair play towards t\\6 inculpated Governor. Mr J. Home Payne h.as been sent out, by the Anti-slavery Society, to watch the commission dn their behalf. Two gentlemen also have been despatched on a somewhat similar errand by the Society of Friends ; so that the negroes will not lack, disinterested friends to guard their interests. Dr Underhill, too, has taken ca'te to be well' represented before the commission J and five months hence thee will be very little about Jamaica which England all will not knovV. It has been explained that the commission is Hot empowered to try any of the parties impliJ catea in the outbreak or in its suppression; it is simply to collect evidence, On which the Government will act hereafter, and it will in no way interfere with the future action of the.law courts. It was thought by many candid minded persons that, as soon as the chief actors in the late bloody razzia upon the blacks and their legislative and journalistic eulogists became cognizant of the feelings inspired in England by their deeds, proofs of the conspiracy to murder the whites, and evidence of Gordon's guilty complicity, would have been furnished in abundance ; but ot was not so. Proofs, however, did arrive that there had been a reign of terrorism in the island ; that everybody, high and low, was afraid to u'{ter a word against the savage barbarities perpetrated by the authorities, lest he or she should be shot or whipped. Even correspondence was examined, and the papers were under the strictest surveillance. Now that the press is ungagged, and some modicum of individual liberty is restored, sad confessions are made, and terrible tales are told. In the few weeks subsequent to the massacre a complete revolution in the form of Government was effected ; civil liberty wag hedged in with many odious restrictions, and religious liberty, except in the case of two or three favored sects, was summarily abolished. Such measures have not been enacted in any constitutiondl land since the days of the Stuarts. When the full knowledge of the indignation of the British public, and the changed tone of Mr Cardwell's despatches, were fully realised by Mr Eyre, he knew that it w«nild have been vain to forward such specimens of old-world legislation to, England for approval ; he therefore recommended the colonial Government to commit felo-de-se, which was clone accordingly, The consti • tutional system is abolished, and the island will henceforth be ruled despotically, as a presidency. We must have an abler man, however, at the Colonial Office in place of ,Mr Cardwell.