
Luke Batterham
Senior Valuer
This auction has ended. View lot details
Sold for £237.50 inc. premium
Our Books & Manuscripts specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.
Find your local specialist
Senior Valuer
The Jamaica Committee – in one of the great causes celebres of the era – was calling for the prosecution of Governor Eyre for the brutal suppression under martial law of a revolt in Jamaica. Mill was Chairman during its most active phase, receiving the support of such luminaries as Darwin (a subscriber), Huxley and Lyell. An opposing committee was soon set up by those who saw Eyre as a hero, with Carlyle in the chair and Ruskin as his second, and receiving the support of further luminaries such as Tennyson and Dickens. In the event, only two of Eyre's military subordinates came to trial, and were acquitted, and the Committee was wound up in 1869. Nevertheless, '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' (R. W. Kostal, 'Jamaica Committee', ODNB).