ation should have been
patient, open, and thorough, granting to the accused every opportunity
of defence. What did take place was this. Mr. Gordon was at Kingston,
forty miles away from the scene of action. As soon as he learned that a
warrant was out for his arrest, he surrendered himself, and was hurried
away from the place where civil law was supreme to the scene of martial
law at Morant Bay. Without a friend to defend him, with no opportunity
to procure rebutting evidence, he was brought before a court of three
subalterns, and, after what was called "a very patient trial" of four or
five hours, sentenced to be hanged. Not one insult was spared. When he
was marched up from the wharf, the sailors were permitted to heap upon
him every opprobrious epithet. Before his execution "his black coat and
vest were taken from him as a prize by one soldier, his spectacles by
another; so," as an officer boasts, "he was treated not differently from
the common herd." The accusation was, that he had plotted a wide-spread
and diabolical rebellion. The only evidence which has been submitted
proves him guilty of intemperate language, and an abounding sympathy for
the poor and oppressed.[G] In his last letter to his wife, written just
before his execution, he uses language which has the stamp of truth upon
it. "I do not deserve my sentence, for I never advised or took part in
the insurrection. All I ever did was to recommend the people who
complained to seek redress in a legitimate way. It is, however, the will
of God that I should thus suffer in obeying his command to relieve the
poor and needy, and so far as I was able to protect the oppressed. And
glory be to His name, and I thank Him that I suffer in such a cause."
But it matters not of what Mr. Gordon was guilty; the method of the
proceedings, the dragging him from civil protection, the deprivation of
all proper opportunity for defence, the putting him to death as it were
in a corner, were all subversive of personal rights and safety. The
highest authority in England has declared the whole trial an illegality.
And the circumstances of the hour, when every vestige, ever pretence, of
armed resistance had been swept away, left no excuse for over-stepping
the bounds of legal authority.

It is proper that full weight should be given to the alleged
justification of these enormities. A diabolical plot existed, whose
meshes included the whole island, and whose purpose was to put to death
ev