ked their representative for having
saved the island. A clamour rose, and they sent out a commission to
examine into what had happened. The commission reported unfavourably,
and Eyre was dismissed and ruined. In Jamaica I never heard anyone
express a doubt on the full propriety of his action. He carried away
with him the affection and esteem of the whole of the English colonists,
who believe that he saved them from destruction. In my own opinion the
fault was not in Mr. Eyre, and was not in the unfortunate Gordon, but in
those who had insisted on applying a constitutional form of government
to a country where the population is so unfavourably divided. If the
numbers of white and black were more nearly equal, the objection would
be less, for the natural superiority of the white would then assert
itself without difficulty, and there would be no panics. Where the
disproportion is so enormous as it is in Jamaica, where intelligence and
property are in a miserable minority, and a half-reclaimed race of
savages, cannibals not long ago, and capable, as the state of Hayti
shows, of reverting to cannibalism again, are living beside them as
their political equals, such panics arise from the nature of things, and
will themselves cause the catastrophe from the dread of which they
spring. Mutual fear and mistrust can lead to nothing in the end but
violent collisions. The theory of constitutional government is that the
majority shall rule the minority, and as long as the qualities, moral
and mental, of the parties are not grossly dissimilar, such an
arrangement forms a tolerable _modus vivendi_. Where in character, in
mental force, in energy, in cultivation, there is no equality at all,
but an inequality which has existed for thousands of years, and is as
plain to-day as it was in the Egypt of the Pharaohs, to expect that the
intelligent few will submit to the unintelligent many is to expect what
has never been found and what never ought to be found. The whites cannot
be trusted to rule the blacks, but for the blacks to rule the whites is
a yet grosser anomaly. Were England out of the way, there would be a war
of extermination between them. England prohibits it, and holds the
balance in forced equality. England, therefore, so long as the West
Indies are English, must herself rule, and rule impartially, and so
acquit herself of her self-chosen responsibilities. Let the colonies
which are occupied by our own race rule themselves as we ru