Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/663

 resident in Jamaica were warm in their gratitude to Eyre. On 17 Jan. 1866 the legislative assembly voluntarily dissolved itself and abrogated the old popular constitution, leaving it to the home government to administer the island as a crown colony. Meanwhile the news of the riot and its manner of suppression reached England, and at first evoked approval of Eyre's prompt action; but presently passionate clamour arose from a large party, by which Eyre was held up to execration as a monster of cruelty. In turn another section of the public, with almost equal violence, made Eyre their idol. Lord Russell, the prime minister, surveyed the conflict with judicial impartiality. In December a royal commission of inquiry, consisting of Sir Henry Storks [q. v.], governor of Malta, Russell Gurney [q. v.], and John B. Maule, then recorder of Leeds, was sent to Jamaica, and Eyre was temporarily suspended from the governorship in favour of Storks. The commission arrived in Kingston on 6 Jan. 1866 and sat from 23 Jan. to 21 March. In February 1600l. was subscribed in Jamaica for Eyre's defence.

On 9 April 1866 the commission reported that Eyre had acted with commendable promptitude and had stopped a riot which might have attained very serious dimensions, but that he had subsequently acted with unnecessary rigour, that Gordon's alleged offence of high treason was not proved, that there was no evidence of any organised conspiracy, and that many of the court-martials were improperly conducted. The House of Commons unanimously endorsed the findings of the commission. Lord Russell's government thanked Eyre for his promptitude, blamed him for excess in subsequent reprisal, and recalled him from his government. The accession of Lord Derby to power in June made no difference to Eyre. Sir J. P. Grant was gazetted in his place on 16 July.

Eyre arrived at Southampton on 12 Aug. 1866, and was publicly entertained there by his supporters, including Lord Cardigan and Charles Kingsley, on the 21st (cf. Ladies in Parliament, 1869). But for the next three years his opponents, whom Carlyle styled a ' knot of nigger philanthropists,' maintained unceasing warfare upon him (cf., Shooting Niagara : and After, Grit, and Miscel. Essays, London, 1899, v. 12). The 'Jamaica committee,' with John Stuart Mill as chairman, supported by Huxley, Thomas Hughes, Herbert Spencer, and Goldwin Smith, resolved on the prosecution for murder of Eyre and his chief associates in Jamaica (27 July 1866); and in September an equally influential committee, with Carlyle as chairman and Ruskin and Tennyson among its subscribers, undertook his defence. Eyre's effigy was burnt at a working-class meeting on Clerkenwell Green, and liberals and radicals lost no opportunity of denunciation. On 8 Feb. 1867 Brand, who had presided over the court-martial on Gordon, and Colonel (Sir) Alexander Abercromby Nelson [q. v.], who had confirmed the capital sentence, were committed for trial at Bow Street on a charge of murder. Eyre had retired to Adderley Hall, Shropshire, and was brought before the local bench, who dismissed the case on 27 March. He was defended by Hardinge Giffard, afterwards earl of Halsbury. In April Lord Chief Justice Cockburn elaborately went over the whole ground when charging the grand jury at the Old Bailey in regard to the defendants Nelson and Brand. He questioned Eyre's right to proclaim martial law and advised the grand jury to find a true bill. But this the jury declined to do and the prisoners were set free. Next year (2 June 1868) the proceedings against Eyre were revived. Under a mandamus of the queen's bench, which had jurisdiction under the Colonial Governors Act, he was charged at Bow Street with misdemeanour and was committed for trial. The grand jury at the Old Bailey were now charged by Mr. Justice Blackburn, who expressed dissent from Cockburn's view, and the bill against Eyre was thrown out. Finally, at the instigation of the Jamaica committee, a negro named Phillips brought a civil action for damages for false imprisonment against Eyre (29 Jan. 1869). Eyre pleaded the act of indemnity passed by the local legislature and obtained a verdict. Mill, in his 'Autobiography' (pp. 298-9), justified the part which he took in the attack on Eyre, but the hostile agitation was so conducted as to create an impression of vindictiveness. Carlyle's conclusion 'that Eyre was a just, humane, and valiant man, faithful to his trusts everywhere, and with no ordinary faculty for executing them' was finally accepted. On 8 July 1872, after discussion in the House of Commons, the government ordered payment of Eyre's legal expenses from the public funds. In his speech at Bow Street Eyre made a very dignified protest, and after the bill had been thrown out by the grand jury he published a defence in a letter to the newspapers. It is, however, impossible to understand the quiescent attitude of Eyre throughout the