An important debate about race and the rule of law in mid- Victorian Britain 36 DARWIN, Charles, Charles Lyell, J. S. Mill, & others.
Album entitled “Autographs of members of the Jamaica Committee”. London, February 1867 £22,000 Quarto (242 × 191 mm). Contemporary red roan, unlettered, spine with gilt rules, sides framed in gilt and blind with fleurons at corners, white endpapers patterned in gold, marbled edges. Calligraphic manuscript title in red ink, with 23 signed quotations and signatures, 7 with accompanying photographs, including by Charles Darwin (signature dated 24 February 1867), J. S. Mill (signed quotation and photograph), John Bright (signed quotation dated 16 February 1867, and photograph), Thomas Huxley, Charles Lyell (signature and photograph), mounted on rectos only. Extremities worn, very good.
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A remarkable album featuring the autographs and some portrait photographs of the Jamaica Committee and their leading supporters, a gathering of mid- Victorian activists and philanthropists in support of the just application of law in the formerly enslaved colonies, including men of science such as Charles Darwin, Charles Lyell, and Thomas Huxley, under the leadership of John Stuart Mill and John Bright. The Jamaica Committee was formed in outrage at the consequences of the Morant Bay Rebellion, when the colonial authorities imposed martial law in the most severe suppression of unrest in the history of the British West Indies. The levels of violence used and the number of executions carried out generated a fierce debate in England. On 11 October 1865, a protest march in Morant Bay against the oppression of the black peasantry ended in the shooting of seven men by the volunteer militia. Jamaica’s governor, Edward Eyre, declared martial law and about 500 people were executed in the weeks that followed the riot, including Paul Bogle, the Baptist deacon who had led the march, and George William Gordon, a mixed-race representative of the parish in the House of Assembly, who had not even been present in Morant Bay. The Jamaica Committee focused its efforts on bringing a prosecution against Eyre in Great Britain for atrocities committed under the spurious authority of martial law, especially the execution of Gordon. An important principle was at stake, as articulated by John Stuart Mill: “The question was, whether the British Dependencies, and eventually, perhaps, Great Britain itself, were to be under the government of law, or of military licence.” Charles Darwin subscribed £10 to the Jamaica Committee fund, although he did not take an active role due to his perennial ill health. This album dates from February 1867, at which point the Committee was pursuing private prosecutions of several military officers who had served in
Jamaica. It attests to the prominent support garnered by the campaign: two eminent radical MPs, John Stuart Mill and John Bright, were supported by a wide range of progressive voices. However, the cause split British society and Eyre had many vocal defenders, including John Ruskin, Charles Dickens, and a number of men of science, Joseph Dalton Hooker and John Tyndall among them, who argued that firmness was needed to preserve colonial order. Their arguments weighed the rule of law against a racial hierarchy made explicit in The Spectator : “We pardon Eyre because his error of judgment involves only negro blood”. Although Eyre was dismissed from his position and never held another government job, repeated attempts at prosecution failed to indict Eyre and the Jamaica Committee was wound up in 1869. “But while the Jamaica Committee failed in its attempt to establish a decisive precedent concerning the illegality of martial law, it succeeded in engendering the Victorian era’s most prolonged and fertile debate concerning military and political power and the rule of law” ( ODNB ). The album was assembled by John Bright’s daughter Helen (1840–1927), who had recently married William Stephens Clark, the liberal Quaker owner of Clarks shoes. She continued the family tradition of passionate support for liberal causes. Meetings with Frederick Douglass inspired her anti-racism, and she was a lifelong and vocal supporter of women’s suffrage.
SIXTY FINE ITEMS
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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