I entertain so deeply-rooted an objection to this method of killing people--the act itself appears to me to be so frightful a precedent, that I desire to see it stigmatised by the highest authority as a crime. And I have joined the committee which proposes to indict Mr. Eyre, in the hope that I may hear a court of justice declare that the only defence which can be set up (if the Royal Commissioners are right) is no defence, and that the killing of Mr. Gordon was the greatest offence known to the law--murder. I remain, Sir, your obedient servant. T.H. Huxley. The Atehnaeum Club, October 30, 1866. [Two letters to friends who had taken the opposite side in this burning question show how resolutely he set himself against permitting a difference on matters of principle to affect personal relations with his warmest opponents.] Jermyn Street, November 8, 1866. My dear Kingsley, The letter of which you have heard, containing my reasons for becoming a member of the Jamaica Committee was addressed to the "Pall Mall Gazette" in reply to some editorial speculations as to my reasons for so doing. I forget the date of the number in which my letter appeared, but I will find it out and send you a copy of the paper. Mr. Eyre's personality in this matter is nothing to me; I know nothing about him, and, if he is a friend of yours, I am very sorry to be obliged to join in a movement which must be excessively unpleasant to him. Furthermore, when the verdict of the jury which will try him is once given, all hostility towards him on my part will cease. So far from wishing to see him vindictively punished, I would much rather, if it were practicable, indict his official hat and his coat than himself. I desire to see Mr. Eyre indicted and a verdict of guilty in a criminal court obtained, because I have, from its commencement, carefully watched the Gordon case; and because a new study of all the evidence which has now been collected has confirmed my first conviction that Gordon's execution was as bad a specimen as we have had since Jeffries' time of political murder. Don't suppose that I have any particular admiration for Gordon. He belongs to a sufficiently poor type of small political agitator--and very likely was a great nuisance to the Governor and other respectable persons. But that is no reason why he should be condemned, by an absurd tribunal and with a brutal mockery of the forms of justice, for offences with which impartial judges, after a full investigation, declare there is no evidence to show that he was connected.