The “Pall Mall Gazette” of October 29, 1866, made a would-be smart allusion to the part taken in the affair by Huxley, which evoked, in reply, a calm statement of his reasons for joining the prosecuting committee:—­

It is amusing (says the “Pall Mall”) to see how the rival committees, the one for the prosecution and the other for the defence of Mr. Eyre, parade the names of distinguished persons who are enrolled as subscribers on either side.  Mill is set against Carlyle, and to counterbalance the adhesion of the Laureate to the Defence Fund, the “Star” hastens to announce that Sir Charles Lyell and Professor Huxley have given their support to the Jamaica Committee.  Everything, of course, depends on the ground on which the subscriptions are given.  One can readily conceive that Mr. Tennyson has been chiefly moved by a generous indignation at the vindictive behaviour of the Jamaica Committee.  It would be curious also to know how far Sir Charles Lyell’s and Mr. Huxley’s peculiar views on the development of species have influenced them in bestowing on the negro that sympathetic recognition which they are willing to extend even to the ape as “a man and a brother.”

The reply appeared in the “Pall Mall” of October 31:—­]

Sir,

I learn from yesterday evening’s “Pall Mall Gazette” that you are curious to know whether certain “peculiar views on the development of species,” which I am said to hold in the excellent company of Sir Charles Lyell, have led me to become a member of the Jamaica Committee.

Permit me without delay to satisfy a curiosity which does me honour.  I have been induced to join that committee neither by my “peculiar views on the development of species,” nor by any particular love for, or admiration of the negro—­still less by any miserable desire to wreak vengeance for recent error upon a man whose early career I have often admired; but because the course which the committee proposes to take appears to me to be the only one by which a question of the profoundest practical importance can be answered.  That question is, Does the killing a man in the way Mr. Gordon was killed constitute murder in the eye of the law, or does it not?

You perceive that this question is wholly independent of two others which are persistently confused with it, namely—­was Mr. Gordon a Jamaica Hampden or was he a psalm-singing fire-brand? and was Mr. Eyre actuated by the highest and noblest motives, or was he under the influence of panic-stricken rashness or worse impulses?

I do not presume to speak with authority on a legal question; but, unless I am misinformed, English law does not permit good persons, as such, to strangle bad persons, as such.  On the contrary, I understand that, if the most virtuous of Britons, let his place and authority be what they may, seize and hang up the greatest scoundrel in Her Majesty’s dominions simply because he is an evil and troublesome person, an English court of justice will certainly find that virtuous person guilty of murder.  Nor will the verdict be affected by any evidence that the defendant acted from the best of motives, and, on the whole, did the State a service.