Not that the coloured people did not advance. They did. But their advancement was a threat. In the streets of untidy Kingston the coloured and black people met and grumbled and discussed local politics at all the street corners, the very conventicles where they went to pray were hotbeds of discontent. It is no good saying they were ungrateful. They were not. They had rights, but it always takes a long time to make those who will suffer in the conferring of a great benefit understand that in spite of their discomfort that benefit the good of the greater number, must be conferred. I can quite understand the black people vaguely wanting the rights they did not understand, to land, to better pay, to education, and the white people saying--“What are we to do for service? These people are clods. They cannot appreciate such privileges. Why make a fuss about them?” A planter would say--“That man!” in tones of scorn, “why, I remember him a little yellow piccaninny, the son of my black mammy, and there he is in a high collar and tall hat in the Assembly, laying down the law to his betters. Damned impudence! In my father's time his back would soon have made acquaintance with the 'cat,' That would straighten him out!” And both coloured and white would be bitterer for the recollection. I think there was a certain fear among the whites of the growing power among the blacks. A desire to keep the subject race in its place. Naturally, most naturally. I am sure had I lived in those times I should have sided with them, for a black man, ignorant and aggrieved, and armed with a hoe or a machete can be a very unpleasant opponent. The brooding discontent grew and grew, fomented, said the white people by men of the half-blood like George William Gordon, men of some standing and education, and at last on the 11th October 1865, at Morant Bay in the east of the island, the place where the people from Nevis had settled in the seventeenth century, the smouldering discontent burst into flame. The blacks rose, overwhelmed the volunteers by sheer numbers and slew not only all the white magistrates assembled in the Courthouse, but among them a black man who was much respected among the white people and had risen to be a magistrate. The tale of rebellion seems always the same. The assailed have feared and feared, and yet when the moment comes, are taken by surprise. It was so now. Twenty-two civilians were killed, thirty-four wounded and nearly all the public buildings in Morant Bay were burnt down. Edward John Eyre was Governor of Jamaica at the time. In Australia Eyre had been a great man. Wonderfully he had explored desolate lands; he was Protector to the Aborigines, and counted a man who was just to colour. But Jamaica broke him.