nal theory he was legally
entitled to do; nor was his language on the platform, though violent and
inflammatory, any more so than what we listen to patiently at home.
Under a popular constitution the people are sovereign; the members of
the assemblies are popular delegates; and when there is a diversion of
opinion any man has a right to call the constituencies to express their
sentiments. If stones were thrown at the police and seditious cries were
raised, it was no more than might be reasonably expected.

We at home can be calm on such occasions because we know that there is
no real danger, and that the law is strong enough to assert itself. In
Jamaica a few thousand white people were living in the middle of negroes
forty times their number--once their slaves, now raised to be their
political equals--each regarding the other on the least provocation with
resentment and suspicion. In England the massacre in Hayti is a
half-forgotten story. Not one person in a thousand of those who
clamoured for the prosecution of Governor Eyre had probably ever heard
of it. In Jamaica it is ever present in the minds of the Europeans as a
frightful evidence of what the negroes are capable when roused to
frenzy. The French planters had done nothing particularly cruel to
deserve their animosity, and were as well regarded by their slaves as
ever we had been in the English islands. Yet in a fever of political
excitement, and as a reward for the decree of the Paris Revolutionary
Government, which declared them free, they allowed the liberty which was
to have elevated them to the white man's level to turn them into devils;
and they massacred the whole of the French inhabitants. It was
inevitable that when the volcano in Jamaica began to show symptoms of
similar activity the whites residing there should be unable to look on
with the calmness which we, from thousands of miles away, unreasonably
expected of them. They imagined their houses in flames, and themselves
and their families at the mercy of a furious mob. No personal relation
between the two races has grown up to take the place of slavery. The
white gentry have blacks for labourers, blacks for domestic servants,
yet as a rule (though, of course, there are exceptions) they have no
interest in each other, no esteem nor confidence: therefore any symptom
of agitation is certain to produce a panic, and panic is always violent.

The blacks who attended Gordon's meetings came armed with guns an