ADDRESSES TO HIS EXCELLENCY EDWARD JOHN EYRE "MORANT BAY REBELLION"
Letter from the Parish of St. Elizabeth
St Elizabeth's, February, 1866.
To His Excellency E. J. Eyre, Esquire, &c.
The Magistrates, Clergy, and Inhabitants of the Parish of St. Elizabeth, feel it a great duty which they owe to your Excellency to express to you, at this time especially, their conviction that to you the Island is indebted for the checking and putting down the Rebellion, which, commencing in Saint Thomas in the East, unless for the prompt measures and energy exhibited, we believe, would have spread death and misery through the Island.
Your Excellency, by wise and immediate action, has saved our families from worse than death. It will be our duty to impress on our sons and on our daughters that to you they owe life and honour. Your own heart will tell you as a husband, and a parent what you have done for us. Our hearts say, may God reward you, and deliver you from all your enimies.
Your Excellency we hesitate not to tell you that we have no faith in the present calm; we know not what will come, or how soon services such as you have rendered us may be required again. We trust such Counsels and action as lately preserved us, may not be wanting in a like emergency.
With every good wish towards yourself and Mrs. Eyre, with whom we sincerely sympathise, and for your family, we shall ever be,
Your Excellency's Grateful and faithful friends,
(Signed) John Salmon, J. Isaacs, Charles Isaacs, Robert Smith, William Finlason, M. Myers, Arthur P. Rowe, F. Hendricks, A. J. Hendricks, John Finlason, Thomas Doran, W. G. K. Boxer, John W. Earle, J.P, Sol. Myers DaCosta, T. Salmon Maxwell, JP., Nathaniel Stevens, Stephen B. Parchment, Henry Labor, William Weller, John Calder, J.P., Louis Lindo, William Simpson, J.P., Samuel Anderson, William Lewis, John A. T. Calder, Alfred J. Wray, Abraham J. Hyam, John Clarke, R. P. White, Thomas Wetherby, George E. Levy, H. M. Belenfante, Edwin Levy, Frederick Alberga, Joseph Peart, Isaac R. Dacosta, E. T. Allen, J. R. Tuckett, B. Wells, Stephen Peynado, J.P., E. A Sherlock, N. R. Hyam, C. P. D., W. O'Francis Nangle, F. A. Petgrave, Myer Polack, Thomas W. Petgrave, Stephen Bondsell, Thomas A. Baguie, W. A. Roberts, H. C. Taylor, J. R. Tomlinson, J. Sinclair, Raynes W. Smith, J.P, John C. C. Thompson, Robert Watson, jnr, George G. Nicholson, William Smith, Thomas McDaniel, W. H. Coke, J.P., J. E. Kerr, J.P, Arthur Beswick, J.P., William Freckleton, George Beswick, John A. Roberts, William Doran, Elias Quallo, J. M Muschett, John Blake, Henry Thomson, G. W. Cator, M. H. Smith, Island Curate, N. J. Heath, J. R. Usher, John Hudson, J.P., Peter Byone, D. Sullivan, J.P., Daniel Fogarty, A. A. Finlason, William Sullivan, Thomas McTaggart, Henry McDonald, C. J. Monteath, W. E. Bennett, J. W. Bean, William Bean, John O'Sullivan, John Shaw, J. J. Gruber, William B. Crawly, John M. Cooper, J.P., Francis Maxwell, J.P. |
His Excellency's Reply
To the Honorable John Salmon, I. Isaacs, C. Isaacs, R. Smith, W. Finlaison, (sic) Esquire, &c, &c, &c.
Mr. Custos, Reverend Gentlemen, and Gentlemen,
Accept my grateful thanks for your warm hearted address expressing your appreciation of my services in putting down and preventing the spread of the late rebellion.
It is a very great gratification (sic) to me to know that whatever may be the misrepresentations I am subjected to by a section of the English public and press, the colonists of Jamaica who have the best means of estimating the emergency which existed and of understanding the limited resources available to meet it, recognized both the necessity and the justice of the course adopted, and that that course was crowned with success.
I deeply regret to learn that you have no faith in the present calm, but I fervently trust, that through the naval and military protection afforded by Great Britain, and by and the watchful vigilance of the colonists themselves, any further recurrence of disturbances may be averted, and that in the course of time the excitement or ill feeling which have existed or yet exist may gradually subside and a renewed state of confidence be restored between the different classes of the community.
For your good wishes and sympathy towards myself and family, I thank you most heartily
(signed) E. EYRE.
Flamstead, 1st March, 1866. |