Mr. Richard Hart has kindly provided this Volume of his father’s Monthly comments for publication on this website. The Copyright for the material is reserved by the Hart family, who have agreed that the material may be distributed free of charge for personal use only. They have stipulated that it not be altered or sold in any format.

Mr. Ansell Hart published Volume 3 of his Monthly Comments in 24 monthly issues over a two year period. The first issue, namely Volume 3 number 1, was published in May 1958 and the final issue of Volume 3 namely Number 24 was published in April of 1960.

The Herald Limited-Printers, 44 Church Street in Kingston, Jamaica, originally printed them. The subscription for all 24 issues was ten shillings sterling or about US$ 1.0 in today's money.

Volume 3 as published on this site contains all twenty four issues and is around one hundred and twenty five pages.

In compiling this document, the only license that I have taken, is to attach some headings to various sections, so that the Table of Contents may be more useful. You may go to any section listed in the Table of Contents by "clicking" on the description given there.

Enjoy!

Dr. John B. deMercado.

Ottawa, Ontario

March 15^th 2000

Volume 3. Number 1. MAY 1958

CAUSERIES

First fruits of Federation: the tail wags the dog. The governments of Jamaica and Trinidad are practically un-represented in the federal elected house.

The decision of the Governor General on nominations for the Senate is palpably absurd. The de facto and de jure government of Jamaica should not be cut down as to full nominating privilege merely because the Opposition scored a victory in the federal elections. The government of Jamaica is still the government of Jamaica for all purposes.

Solomon's judgment saved the life of the baby. The Governor General's judgment kills one of the Jamaican babies.

Nonchalantly the addict lights another cigarette; and believes he owns the world. In fact he is slave to the cigarette.

Sometimes it all begins with a child flouting authority, seeking escape in disobedience. Sometimes it begins merely as an adolescent pose; sometimes merely as "follow‑fashion". Later the inescapable habit of escape grips the victim, his pocket book and his health.

Habit, acquired, sometimes with difficulty, is sanctioned by illustrious example and sanctified as necessity. Of such are various forms of infantile regress. Infantile regress is the law of the many. Over 2000 years ago Socrates noted the fallibility of the many.

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

It should be borne in mind that there are two distinct varieties of attitudes toward organized religion. The more popular and almost universal one is that in which the particular religion is made for one by others (mostly parents relatives or friends), is passed on by tradition or tuition, is settled‑in by conformity and is crystallized by use and wont a sort of tailor‑made attitude. The other attitude arises from personal experience and conviction.

It is the apparently secure, but actually insecure spiritual and intellectual condition of the former class which causes the members of that class to deprecate any philosophical, historical or scientific investigation into the origins of their particular cult or religion. For this reason, in the case of Christianity, centuries had to pass after its formal establishment before rational investigation was permitted by public opinion, and this notwithstanding that orthodox forms of the cult became more or less settled only after much controversy and internecine strife. In other words there was more latitude in the matter of orthodoxy in the very early days of Christianity.

When however Gibbon in the eighteenth century essayed his investigations, public opinion compelled him to make his findings behind a veil of subtle satire; while his near contemporary, Tom Paine, incurred severe obloquy for his unveiled approach to the problem. When nineteenth century Bishop . Colenso questioned traditional fundamentalism, and, in a commentary on the Epistle to the Romans also questioned the doctrine of eternal punishment, contemporary religious circles were horrified. Even forty or fifty years ago biblical criticism was almost monopolized by freethinkers or agnostics. In modern times however a change has come over the genre of modern exegesis; and devout Christians have essayed the task. To question tradition or the written word is no longer tabu. These "Comments" therefore take their place in quite reverent and respectable company.

Perhaps one of the most perplexing psychological problems is man's susceptibility to religion; and

among the most intriguing of historical problems are the origin, rise and spread of any particular cult. Obviously the answer that any particular cult has unique or exclusive validity must be rejected. For the student of compartive religion is at once confronted with the multiform faces and voices of many prophets and evangelists urging the unique and mutually exclusive validity of conflicting credos so that any one not favoured with direct revelation or some other more or less direct form of assurance is necessarily bewildered by incompatible claims.

Gibton felt constrained to limit his enquiry to the question as to how "a pure and humble religion gently insinuated itself into the minds of men, grew up in silence and obscurity, derived new vigour from opposition and finally erected the triumphant banner of the Cross" first on the ruins of the great Roman Empire and for centuries thereafter was still professed by great nations distinguished in art and learning, and, as he slily added, in the arts of war. He claimed that he had to forbear from enquiring into "the descent from Heaven of the Religion arrayed in her native purity" and was forced to essay "the more melancholy duty of the historian to discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in her long residence upon earth among a weak and degenerate race of beings". Modern scholarship however has none of the inhibitions which restricted the enquiries of the 18th century historian.

A modern historian describes the barebones of the matter in simple terms: In the reign of Tiberius (A.D. 33) a Jewish religious leader named Jesus proclaimed a new gospel, claiming to fulfil and amend the existing Jewish Law and claiming also that the Jewish Jehovah was the father of all mankind, and not of the Jews alone and that all men were accordingly brothers. He held out a more distinct promise of future life than had been adumbrated in orthodox Jewish tradition. Then or thereafter Jesus was acclaimed as a worker of miracles; and tradition says that he was tumultuously welcomed in Jerusalem, some say, as a descendant of King David, some, as the promised Messiah.

The Jewish High Priest Caiaphas and his associates felt that both Jewish orthodoxy and subservience to imperial Rome were threatened. In defence of both, Jesus was denounced to the Roman Procurator. He was sentenced to crucifixion, the usual form of execution accorded to humble aliens disturbing the peace.

The external historical records indicate little contemporary attention to the incident or to the eclectic teachings of Jesus. Indeed there are records of similar teachings having been ‑for some time past inculcated by the Rabbinical school of Hillel, and practised by the Essenes.

Some of the followers of Jesus believed in his resurrection; and constituted themselves into a new Jewish Christianized sect entirely separated from the Synagogue.

The Jews had themselves for an appreciable period previously been very active in the Roman empire in proselytizing zeal, sometimes indulgently permitted, sometimes suppressed by the Roman authorities. Now they were to be jostled by the new sect, comprising both Christianized Jews and non Jewish (or Gentile) Christians, who were to carry the new cult through Asia Minor and Greece to Rome, while Peter (an original devotee) and Paul (a new convert) along with other zealous converts laid the foundations of a universal church by missionary visits and epistles.

Traditions of the life of Jesus, which had grown up, passed from hand to hand in manuscript form; and were eventually compiled by Mark and later edited in the form in which they appear in the New Testament. The epistles also were cast into literary form, and the three other synoptic gospels of Matthew and Luke and still later of John appeared, as also the Apocalypse and other Apocryphal books, sometimes accepted, sometimes rejected for the scriptural record. The synoptic gospels are of unique importance for Christians. They recount for believers practically all that is known of the earthly life of Jesus and contain the most orthodoxy authoritative record of his teaching.

Modern scholarship discloses that the gospel of Mark was used by Matthew and Luke; and that there was a further body of traditions besides those collected by Mark (known to scholars as "Q" or "second source"), no trace of which however any longer remains available. Mark appears therefore to be the sole extant more or less original authority for most of the incidents in the ministry of Jesus. Mark was however not an original scribe. His gospel has been likened to a pool into which many rivulets have flowed ‑ not a historical biography, but a collection of anecdotes strung together from many sources. It is surmised by Bishop Barnes that that is perhaps how Jesus comes to appear in the record as a wonderworker, and also as an exorcist, one who drove out evil spirits. Bishop Barnes emphasises that Christianity was primarily a movement among the lower middle and artisan class, the early converts being ill‑educated and superstitious people; and that in any case the world was then generally a superstitious world. He .makes it clear that in repudiating the miracles, one does not necessarily impugn the honesty, but merely the critical acumen of the gospel writers.

Christianity arose as a schism or heresy within the Jewish cult; but the history of the early Christian movement reveals various schisms and heresies within the new cult itself.

At the beginning of his gospel, Mark links his report of events with Old Testament prophecies. Both Matthew and Luke did the same. They were all Jews, steeped in Jewish traditions which held out Messianic promises. The new cult accepted Jesus as the promised Jewish Messiah.

It is not surprising however that it should have occurred to a gentile Christian that the God of the New Testament presented marked differences of character to the Judaic Jehovah. This gave rise in the second century to the Marcionite heresy. About 140 A.D. Marcion reached Rome and endeavoured to obtain acceptance of his doctrine, which sought to jettison the Old Testament (with its law of retaliation) and the just and jealous God of the Jews as being incompatible with the Christian doctrine of love and humility.

The golden age of the Marcionite heresy was between 150 and 250 A.D., during which period the Marcionite communities ranked second only to Catholicism in the Christian cult. During the fourth century Marcionism fell prey to Manichaeism; and by the seventh century Marcionism had completely disappeared.

Marcionism should not be confused with Gnosticism, which, originating among the Jews before Christianity, also gave rise to schisms and heresies within Christianity, and left its traces on Marcionism also.

Another schism or heresy was that of Montanus. He claimed to be inspired by the Paraclete promised in the gospel. Montanism emphasised the social character of Christianity, forbade marriage and childbearing .by reason of the imminent end of the world, (which was then believed in by Christians) ; and enjoined the renunciation of earthly joys. Montanism went the way of other heresies; but like them left its mark on the new cult. It had lasted for some centuries; and was at last suppressed only by violence by Christian ,Roman emperors.

Contrary to popular belief, the Catholic Christian Church was not a very numerous body when it first became socially and politically distinguishable in the second century. The first Churches in the cities of Asia Minor, like the groups addressed by Paul, were small conventicles meeting in private houses. It was not until the fourth century, sixty years after the Emperor Constantine had embraced Christianity that the oldest and most important Church of Antioch numbered as many as one hundred thousand in a city population of half a million.

An average Christian of the second century would be an unlettered person of the lower‑middle or poorer class, opposed to idols, the theatre, the circus and the public bath, credulous as to . demons and miracles, uncritical as to the sacred books, very emotional with regard to the "mysteries" connected with his cult, addicted to ritual, but sober and chaste and strongly imbued with the spirit of martyrdom. The community of Christian worshippers were united in hostility to pagan beliefs and in the hope of personal "salvation" and belief in individual immortality.

The clergy were of indifferent culture but often of great strength of character. The Bishop was at first the treasurer. It was only gradually that the growth of the priesthood supervened in full measure. Liturgy was for a long time a matter of local choice; but a eucharist, with varying ritual and hymns, sung by special officials, was a primary function of every church. By the end of the second century, as numbers and revenue increased, side by side with the ambition and administrative ability of the Bishops appeared their vice and arrogance which gave rise to loud complaints. Nevertheless the Bishops by their force of character and administrative ability, promoted the growth and consolidation of the cult.

By the third century, doctrinal discussion inherited from Judaism had developed ritual and ceremonial rivalling those of the pagan cults. Incense, formerly abhorred as a form of idolatry, came into general use, along with images and gold and silver medals. Baptism and the eucharist had become "mysteries"; and formal exorcism preceded initiation. The eucharist was retarded as necessary to salvation and resurrection.

The Nucleus of the creed was given in the fourth gospel. The suggestion that the author, John, was an eye‑witness of events in the life of Jesus is not accepted by modern scholarship, and the last chapter is by general agreement regarded as a later editorial addition. Editorial insertions and additions were common in the days when the gospels were circulated in manuscript. While earlier fragments have been found, none of the existing manuscripts of the New Testament go back earlier than the fourth century.

Contrary to the fourth gospel, Justin Martyr (a contemporary of the second century) regarded the Logos not as a personal form of deity, but as the inspiration given by God to men in different degrees at different times. Out of this difference, or perhaps to meet pagan attacks on the cult on the ground of polytheism, arose some of the later heresies. . Praxeas, for example, taught that the Son and the Holy Spirit were simply functions of (not entities distinct from) the one God. At once orthodox Christians labelled him "Patripassian" (one who made God, the Father, suffer bodily on the cross). In the hands of Sabellius, the teaching became an influential heresy. The Logos has been regarded sometimes as an esoteric doctrine, sometimes as a beacon light for the believing Christian. Heresies over the Logos culminated with Paul of Samosata who taught that the Logos was merely the wisdom of God, which descended into but was not united with Jesus. His teaching was condemned by the Council of Antioch in 264 and he promised reformation but on his failure to keep his promise he was deposed and excommunicated by another Council which met in 269 or 270. He however refused to recant, and obtained the protection of Zenobia, who then reigned in Antioch; but when Antioch was retaken by Marcus Aurelius in 272, Paul was finally ousted.

The development of these Councils in the third century seems to prove both the growth and the necessity for the control of doctrine. Indeed but for the Councils organized Christianity might well have broken up into a host of undisciplined churches. Nevertheless the battle continued between the orthodox and the heresies and between Christianity and Paganism, the polemical writers doing little more than encouraging and supporting those already convinced and inflaming the contestants. Polemics suffered surcease when the State adopted Christianity and reinforced the power of the Council.

REINCARNATION

"Whose secret presence through creation's veins, running quicksilver‑like eludes our pains; taking all shapes from Mah to Mahi; and they change and perish all; but he remains". This adaptation from Omar Khayyam's Rubalyat indicates in some measure how the theory of reincarnation runs in various forms through the literature (if the ages, from Buddhist, or Brahman, Yogi, Pythagoras, Plato, the Bible, Hume, Schopenhauer, Huxley, and among various poets from Milton and Tennyson through Masefield to the modern psychoanalyst.

Whatever truth or fiction may lie in the theory or doctrine of reincarnation (that the soul, after leaving the body on death, sooner or later is "born again'' in another or other human form or forms), this theory has nothing to do with the vulgar theory of transmigration (that the soul, once in man, may reappear on earth in the form of an animal or insect). Shakespeare popularised this in Twelfth Night: "What is the opinion of Pythagoras concerning wild fowl? That the soul of our granddam may haply inhabit a bird". Shakespeare's version is in all probability an apocryphal vulgarisation of the teaching of Pythagoras.

On the other hand, the repudiation of transmigration in the sense above indicated does not of itself invalidate the findings of Indian philosophy that the soul as an entity emerged or released itself from the animal kingdom and passed into the earliest human forms and thence into higher and higher human forms. Nevertheless the individual survival (after death) of the human soul, while widely and deeply believed in, has never been proved.

Theosophist literature has familiarised the Western world with the principles of Indian philosophy relating to involution and evolution which are held by the great schools of Indian (Hindoo) thought, whether Buddhist or Brahman. In the 1880s certain Westerners received instruction from Eastern Adepts and gave to the Western world a good deal of hitherto arcane knowledge or information. The "Esoteric Buddhism" of A. P. Sinnett, first published in 1883, had run into six editions by 1888. Madame Blavatsky's "Isis Unveiled" and "Secret Doctrine" and Ramacharaka's "Hatha Yoga", "Raja Yoga", "Gnani Yoga" and "Bhakti Yoga" and many brochures of the Theosophical Society further enlightened us as to the tenets of Indian philosophy; while the works of Sir John Woodroffe (Avalon) and Evens‑Wentz familiarised us with the Indian scriptures and adeptship.

One feature of these disclosures is the remarkable extent to which Indian philosophy (relying apparently on clairvoyant methods) claims to have anticipated modern discoveries in physics and psychoanalysis.

There seems little doubt that, immersed in the day to day aspects of the phenomenal world, the soul (or less material, or other Lhan material element of man) is "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd, bound in to saucy doubts and fears"; and that throughout the ages, men have sought or stumbled upon ways and means of bringing about the necessary detachment, to enable them to make closer contact with reality. Many participants have testified to the spiritual and/or intellectual expansion which is experienced. To some it has come by deep‑breathing exercises, to some under the stress of some great emotion, to some from meditation or spiritual contemplation, to some from drugs or drink or hashish or anaesthetics, to some in waking or sleeping dreams, to some under the hands of the hypnotist, or psychoanalyst, or psychiatrist. Some mystics have told us of their methods. Many have left us entirely in doubt. But mysticism and ecstasy are both well authenticated states, even though the addict or adept may still be in the sphere of illusion. (It is interesting to note that etymologically the mystic (Gk: muesis) closes his eyes in order spiritually to see; while in ecstasy (Gk: Ek‑Stasis), one gets out of the body in order to apprehend).

The oldest extant records on the subject of the disembodied soul appear to be those of Indian philosophy. The theory or doctrine is that there is a chain of worlds of different stages of progress, round which the soul‑monads revolve awaiting reincarnation and that the total aggregate of embodied and disembodied souls is a fixed quantity, varying only in the relative quantity of embodied and disembodied at any particular time. So that, for example, a large number of deaths would at once release a large number of disembodied monads for re‑incarnation and increase the birth‑rate of the earth and vice versa.

This doctrine of soul‑monads and re‑birth is to be found also in later lore, in Swedenborg, in Plato, and in many of the poets; and is claimed to be apprehended under conditions of mental detachment from manifestations on the phenomenal level. The Adepts or Yogis had their special technique for inducing detachment. The modern techniques of hypnosis, psychoanalysis and drugs have all yielded remarkable results; but there is still wide scope for varying analyses of the results obtained; and there is also ample scope for charlatanism and fraud.

In any particular case the questions remain: Assuming genuineness, are the incidents recorded due to reincarnation, to cell memory, to telepathy, to auto or hetero‑suggestions, or to cther factors of which we are unaware. Individual immortality may seem assured or probable or improbable or may be regarded as still unproved. There appears to be no reason for getting worked‑up about the matter

Volume 3. Number 2. June 1958

CAUSERIES

Our Chief Minister in time of drought exhorts the Churches to pray for rain. One voter is shocked at this exhibition of superstition; while another is profoundly shocked at the latter's spiritual ignorance. On the whole the Jamaican voter will "like" the Chief Minister's exhortation.

Prime Minister Baldwin, it is said, once had to consider a similar political problem. On the margin of the manuscript of his speech on the King's abdication he noted in bold script "Refer to A.G." This was not, as his Secretary thought, a reference to the Attorney General, but, as Baldwin explained to him, a reminder to himself to "refer to Almighty God, for the English people like this."

The old Persian poet had much to say on things teleological. Did he believe in the efficacy of prayer? Surely not: "And this inverted bowl you call the sky where-under crawling, cooped we live and die, lift not your hands to it for aid; for it as impotently moves as you or I. " Did he however not also write: "As then the tulip for his morning sup of heavenly vintage from the soil looks up, do you devoutly do the like till heaven to earth invert you like an empty cup." But this signified merely joyful chortling not precatory intercession.

"Heavenly Discourse" (that priceless satire) exhibits the awkward contretemps of conflicting prayers: In the first World War the Germans and French prayed separately for victory; while the angel Gabriel carelessly dropped the rose from the spout of the watering can, and gave Nevada a destructive flood, when all it asked for was relief from drought.

Nevertheless worthy, devout and altruistic people have supported great works of social service by faith in prayer: notably the late Mrs. Wortley of the Wortley Home, and now Auntie Bee of the Golden Spring Faith Home, which we cordially recommend to our readers as an act of faith and mercy. It is immaterial whether these people draw the right conclusion as to the efficacy of prayer, or mistake sequence for consequence or co‑incidence for THE incident.

PREGNANT PERIODS OF JAMAICAN HISTORY

A very remarkable feature of Jamaican history is the well‑marked alternations in the appearance, disappearance and reappearance of local loyalties during the successive periods (a) from the 1860s to the 1830s, (b) from the 1830s to the 1930s and (c) from the 1930s.

During the first period the English settlers evinced intense local loyalty which stemmed (as it often does) from the quite objective desideratum of self‑interest self‑government, so that they might protect their planting interests. During this period also the Negro slaves gave strong and persistent evidence of their desire for freedom. Future studies will fire concerned with the later periods above referred to. The present study takes into account the first period.

Colonel D'Oyley, who, by sheer survival capacity, remained intermittently in command until superseded by Lord Windsor in 1662, governed by military law until after the accession of Charles II in 1660. The Buccaneers made Jamaica their principal resort. Treasure poured in, and the military inhabitants amassed great wealth. It was not until 1671 (under Sir Thomas Lynch) that an end was put to the privateering system.)

When the first news of the Restoration reached the island, the inhabitants expected that it would be surrendered to Spain; but in May 1681 D'Oyley's Commission arrived, bidding him proceed to the election of a Council for the government of the island. The army however was kept on foot owing to the forays of the Spaniards; and a settled form of government at first proved defective.

In July 1662 Lord Windsor arrived accompanied by Sir Charles Lyttleton as his lieutenant‑governor and chancellor and bringing with him the famous Royal Proclamation signifying that thirty acres of land should be allotted to every resident of twelve years and upwards and that "all children of any of our natural born subjects of England to be born in Jamaica shall from their respective births be reputed to be and shall be free denizens of England and shall have the frame privileges to ‑all intents and purposes as our free born subjects of England." Enormous patent grants or seizures however defeated the thirty acre allotment.

By his instructions Windsor was empowered to appoint his Council and to call elected assemblies according to the custom of the King's other plantations (notably Barbados), to make laws, which were to be in force for two years (and no more unless confirmed by the King) and upon emergent occasion to levy money &c. (it is important to note the twoyear limitation on local legislative powers; seeing that the Crown was soon to bring pressure on the local legislature by withholding its assent.

Lord Windsor remained only a few months. In December 1663, after his departure, Lyttleton, by the advice of the Council, called the first elected Assembly, which enacted laws and provided for levying and disposing of revenue. Lyttleton left shortly after, and Sir Thomas Modyford was recalled from Barbados and .became Governor in November 1664, and so continued until 1670, when he was succeeded by Sir Thomas Lynch, during whose regime piracy gave way to settled agriculture and industry.

The muster roll of the militia transmitted to the Board of Trade showed two thousand seven hundred and twenty men, a floating population of seamen of two thousand five hundred and total white inhabitants of fifteen thousand one hundred and ninety eight. Fifty seven sugar works were established producing annually about one million seven hundred and ten thousand pounds of sugar, forty seven; cocoa walks, forty nine indigo works, three salt ponds and an annual pimento crop of fifty thousand pounds weight; while the Receiver General reported unlimited supplies of economic woods and large stocks of cattle.

Land valuation for taxation purposes was established: At Port Royal half penny per square foot, savannah and cleared land one penny per acre, with the usual licenses and taxes on the selling and importation of wines. Population of the whites had now doubled and the census showed a Negro labour force of over nine thousand.

In March 1675 the former Buccaneer, now Sir Henry Morgan, arrived as lieutenant‑governor, and shortly after Lord Vaughan arrived as Governor.

The Assembly which was called elected Samuel Long as Speaker. This remarkable young man looms large in early Jamaican history for his clear cut appreciation of the merits and justice of self‑government. He demanded nothing more, he was to state, than the rights of an Englishman and would be satisfied with no less. Freedom, he asserted, did not stop with the shores of Britain.

The condition of the island on the arrival of Lord Vaughan is described by an annalist of the 1820s

"Jamaica, left to her own resources, governed by her own men, and ruled by her own ordinances, displayed a spirit of popular freedom and commercial industry which announced her rising fortunes". (Like the account of the democracy of ancient Greece, the historian's account excluded from its purview the slave population).

The prospects were indeed promising. The amount of export sugar had increased fourfold within a few years.

Two years had by 1677 elapsed since the laws had been passed and sent to England for confirmation; and still they had not been returned. It was therefore necessary to re‑enact them. Lord Vaughan was of an urbane disposition, and was well liked; but cause of dissension arose when he rejected the revenue act. It appeared that upon examination of the laws by the Lords of the committee for trade, they advised the King to reject some and remodel others and return them to Jamaica to be passed by the Assembly as in Ireland according to Poyning's Laws, which rule was to apply in future. This would have reduced the Assembly to the status of a mere rubber‑stamp, which the settlers respectfully :but firmly refused to tolerate. It was surmised that the refusal of Jamaica to pay to the Crown the 4.5% duty on exports which Barbados paid was the cause of the trouble.

Dissensions naturally arose between the Assembly and the Governor. One of the members was committed to prison for an alleged insult to the Governor; and, after a session of two months the Assembly was hastily dissolved, the House insisting on their privileges as enjoyed by the House of Commons. On the, day of the dissolution it was made know that the Earl of Carlisle would shortly be superseding Lord Vaughan.

The Earl of Carlisle arrived in July 1678 with his body of laws, which the Assembly rejected. In his speech the Governor said: "He would not say that the body of laws which he had now brought were altogether the same which were sent home the last time . . . Thaw who were present when his commission was published might observe some alteration in the model of the laws, the style and title being changed to the King and Assembly; which was a greater honour than any plantation ever yet shared. That the laws to be made were for the future to be framed after those of Ireland. That Jamaica was under great obligation to His Majesty, who expected a suitable return; and that he should next day send over an act of revenue, which it was necessary should be quickly despatched, that arrears due might be paid". He added that the King was displeased at the passing of some acts in former Assemblies without using his name.

Thus began the struggle on a matter of important principle which was to earn for the Jamaica Assembly the reputation of being frivolously factious, a slur which was sedulously nurtured by succeeding Governors; and which, when local loyalties later became extinguished or suspended, passed into a proverb, and was accepted as true by all and sundry, and eventually facilitated the liquidation of the local legislature in 1865.

The struggle for liberty in which the early settlers was engaged was important to them. They were asked to rubber‑stamp laws without examination or objection. They were told that no Assembly was to be called except on special order from England or upon extraordinary emergency. All laws were to be framed by the Governor and his Privy Council and, when approved in England, were to .be rubber‑stamped by the Assembly "according to the usage in Ireland." The Assembly declared that "the mode proposed was repugnant to the constitution of England, of which country they were the natural subjects; and that they were not desirous of living under any other than the laws of England:" The Governor was forced to permit the Assembly to pass a revenue act of one year's, duration, and then dissolved the Assembly, the Assembly having separately and clearly rejected each law which the Governor had put before it, respectfully requesting him to intercede with his Majesty on their behalf.

Armed with a further mandate from England, the Governor summoned another Assembly under the same Speaker, Beeston. The drama was re‑staged. By 1679, the Earl of Carlisle threatened that if the members proved obdurate, lie would send them as rebels to England. The members were courteous but adamant. ‑Samuel Long, the Chief Justice, and member of the Assembly and its recognised leader, was suspended from his seat in the Privy Council and dismissed from the Bench. Carlisle dissolved; the Assembly and proceeded to England with Beeston and Long as virtual prisoners.

No sooner had they reached England than Long impeached Carlisle on several counts. 1t should be borne in mind that Long, Carlisle and the lords of plantations belonged more; or less to the same social circle in England and understood one anothers' sentiments. Indeed Carlisle, himself one of the lords of plantations, had warned his colleagues that they were in for rough sledding with the Jamaican settlers on such touchy constitutional points. In the result, the matter was referred to the Judges in England on 23rd June 1680 in the following terms: "Whether .by his Majesty's letter, proclamation or commission annexed, his majesty had excluded himself from the power of establishing laws in Jamaica; it being a conquered country, and all laws settled by authority there being now expired." :There is no record of the judges' decision; but it is of record that the King himself was present and heard colonels Long and Beeston put their case along with the planters and merchants then residing in London, and with the advice of his Privy Council decided in their favour. Accordingly a new commission of the Earl of Carlisle dated 3rd November restored to the island its former government enlarged, and granted that the quit rents arising to his Majesty should be appropriated and applied to the public in order to help the island's economy.

During Carlisle's absence Sir Henry Morgan acted as lieutenant governor. His speech to the House of Assembly in presenting laws for acceptance, which is to be found in the Journals of the House of Assembly at the Jamaica Institute and the library of the U C W I is priceless rhetoric which by way of diversion will repay perusal.

In 1681 Lynch resumed governorship; and of the laws passed in 1682, twenty eight were confirmed by the King for seven years; and those with some others that completed the first volume of Jamaican laws still in print at the time Edward Long wrote in 1774 were later approved and confirmed for twenty one years, and were then still in force.

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

Its intolerance of other religions drew on Christianity in the Roman world reciprocal antipathy. While this was foreign to the native religious tolerance of pagan governments, it harmonised with the traditional hostility to a new cult of the 'established priesthood of ancient religions. For example, this was strongly in evidence among the Jews themselves as appears in the Old Testament; the Dionysiak cult was violently resisted by the established pagan cult in Greece; while a religious panic led: to the suppression of the cults of Isis and Serapis in Rome. As far as official reaction in Rome was concerned however, the Christians would have fared‑better had they been more tolerant. To official Rome one God more or less in the pantheon was of little importance; but to the Christians pagan Gods were active evil demons. Furthermore the Christians shared. With the Jews hatred of Rome, amounting almost to sedition as expressed in the truly terrible indictment contained in the Apocalypse.

In the time of Tertullian (perhaps about 160 to 240 A.D.) Christians were designated "enemies of the Gods, of the emperor, of the laws, of morals ands of all nature"; and "atheists". Nevertheless the famous letter of Pliny to the emperor Trajan (about 100 A.D.) evinces the official inclination to shelter Christians from. prevailing anti‑Christian fanatacism, sustained prejudice, cruelty and oppression. On the whole however persecutions were political, especially when `emperor worship .became spread through the empire.

It is also. true that fanatic Christians brought martyrdom on themselves in intolerant outrages on pagan temples and sacred statues. The story is told of the pro‑consul in Asia who asked a horde of fanatics seeking martyrdom whether they couldn't find ropes and precipices for their uses.

The famous early Christian father Origen, is an outstanding example of the spirit of martyrdom among the early Christians. In the persecution begun by the emperor Severus in A.D. 202, Origen was anxious to share with his father, Leonides, the glory of martyrdom; and was only prevented by the watchfulness of his Mother. His asceticism was notorious; and his tendency to interpret literally the precepts of Christ (Matthew 19, 12) led him to his strange act of self‑mutilation.

By the beginning of the fourth century, the Christian body had become so highly organized that they attracted on the one hand the hostile zeal of the neo‑Platonists, who claimed that the Christians blasphemed other men's Gods, and on the other hand aroused fears in the emperor Diocletian that they were a dangerous organized element in the body politic, especially in their resistance of emperor worship.

The internecine strife which raged among the Christians also played into the hands of their enemies. As Eusebius, the Christian commentator, reports the Christian sects were on the verge of actual warfare, bishop against bishop and party against party seeking power, illustrating the doctrine that "power corrupts". They even accused opponents within the cult of malpractices, giving a handle to similar charges from external sources.

Between 303 and 311 A.D. the Christians were subjected to more persistent persecution than ever before. This was the more remarkable in that Dio had married a Christian, and was himself of a tolerant disposition. He may have been overborne by Galeius, the most masterful of his lieu tenants; and a mysterious conflagration in, the palace enabled officialdom to pin on the Christians the tag of incendiarism, similar to that which Nero had attempted, and which Hitler and Goering were to use six hundred years later in respect of the Communists. Christians were made liable to penalties for arson on a mere refusal to abjure their faith; but the Governors were very remiss in carrying out orders, while many pagan friends sheltered the more austere Christians and many escaped penalties by abjuring their faith. Diocletian himself faltered in his policy; and in 311 Galerius also confessed the failure of his policy by cancelling the decrees against the Christians. It is possible that Diocletian's statesmanlike outlook, had he lived, might have brought him to see (as the less perceptive Galerius did) the useful role that the highly organized body of Christians might play in helping to sustain the empire. In 312 the conversion of Constantine, or his formal acceptance of Christianity opened up a new era of power for the Church. (In this connection the book reviewed in this issue way seem pertinent).

Constantine, now master of the West, won over Licinius, his sole surviving colleague in the East, to a tolerant policy. By the edict of Milan (313) the Christians were accorded complete freedom of worship and exemption from all pagan ceremonies. This was reaffirmed, after Constantine had captured and strangled Licinius and become sole master of the empire.

BOOK‑REVIEW. THE BREAKDOWN OF NATIONS‑Leopold Kohr

(Rinehart ‑ 1957)

While the talented Gordon Lewis, professor of political science at the University of Puerto Rico was furbishing his pen ,for the Federation campaign for the widening of national boundaries in the West Indies, his distinguished colleague, Leopold Kohr, professor of economics and public administration was preparing for publication his attack on the evils of megalopolitics. His book is indeed full of striking analogies, shrewd truths, and wise saws. Human nature is cut down to size; but it is difficult to refute the main thesis of the book in its judgment as to what happens under the corrupting influence of power.

The author has tried "to develop a single theory through which not only some but all phenomena of the social universe can be reduced to a common, denominator." "The result", he claims, "is a new and unified political philosophy centering in the theory of size. It suggests that there seems only one cause behind all forms of social misery ‑ bigness."

The philosophy is claimed to be new only in the sense that it is the basis of an integrated philosophical system; because, as a social theory applying to special fields, it has, as the author points out, been often before proposed, but never given its central position or integrated form.

Other imaginary causes of social misery are passed in review and discounted ‑ notably the "wrath of the Gods" of the ancients, the "witch theory" of the Middle Ages, the "cosmic theory" of the astrologers and soothsayers, the "economic theory" of the socialists, the "psychological theory" of the psychiatrists, the "personal, ideological, cultural or national theory" which imputes special evil to special men, ideologies or nations.

The author claims that the common denominator of national excesses and atrocities is "the simple ability, the power" to commit the atrocities and get away with it; and thus he arrives at his "power theory of social misery." "Everyone having the power will in the end commit the atrocities", given the opportunity and the temptation and the apparent prospect of personal advantage.

"Once the critical power is reached, abuse will result spontaneously . . . The vital element is not so much power but the size of power . . . which . . . depends in turn on the size of the social group . . . What is the critical magnitude leading to abuse? . . . It is the volume of power that assures immunity from retaliation."

Furthermore, "the frequency of crime, growing with the size of the group, seems to be responsible alto for the development of a corresponding frame of mind, a condoning philosophy", which in turn intensifies the frequency of crime. "As society, and with it power, grows, so grows its corrupting effect on the mind," which develops "an adjustable cushion of moral numbness" until "such general numbness and sophistication may set in that murderers lose all sense of criminality and onlookers all sense of crime." Not "perverted leadership or corrupted philosophy but the purely physical element of size", bringing with it the critical quantity of power, causes the stultifying effect on perpetrator and onlooker. The critical quantity of power in turn depends on the size of the social mass. In evaluating the critical size, regard must be had not only to the density of population but to its velocity or volatility. All these factors go to make up the size theory of social misery.

Is there a cure? Fundamentally the cure lies in the decrease in social size, the establishment of "social units of ,such small size that accumulations and condensations of collective power to the danger point can simply not occur." To the corrupting size of the social units, the author traces war through opportunity and temptation.

The author proceeds to draw a new political map of Europe which bears striking similarity to its "natural original (political) landscape."

Volume 3 Number 3. July 1958

CAUSERIES

Alan Wood's biography of Bertrand Russell, the great exponent of mathematics logic and philosophy, alto turns one's mind to Bertrand Russell's flouting of marriage conventions. Coincidentally it was his brother Frank (the ‑former Earl) who gave his name to a leading case on technical bigamy.

The preference in Jamaica for the common law marriage is said to stem from experience. The Jamaican peasant claims that, with the married status, his mate puts on airs and assumes possessive rights. In the 1850’s Richard Hill ("Lights & Shadows . . . " W.I. Reference Library) compared Jamaican extramarital relations not unfavourably historically with the custom in Scotland.

The reproach of barrenness lay heavily on the social conscience alike of ancient Jewish matron and Jamaican peasant maiden. With the latter, economic considerations also accounted for the child; while the limitation to one child was to a limited extent a claim to virtue.

Throughout the world the marriage convention gained social approval and was consolidated by ecclesiastical influence and legal safeguards. In Jamaica the substitution of marriage for faithful concubinagge was promoted by Mrs. Victoria Munn in the Port Royal Mountains in the 1870’s and by Mrs. Morris Knibb in the Liguanea Plains in the 1940’s.

Prostitution, or commercial eroticism, wag little known among primitive peoples with a communal economy. Soviet Russia abolished prostitution by giving women gainful employment. In Japan it is an honourable estate.

Some of our most illustrious Jamaicans stem from a deliberate ancestral flouting of the marriage convention. So it was with William the Conqueror: "His father, Duke Robert, had seen Arlotta, the daughter of a tanner of the town, washing her linen in the little brook by Falaise, and, loving her, had made her the mother of his boy."

While Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" is no longer all fantasy, it is still too soon to judge how artificial insemination will affect the marriage convention and conventional ideas on chastity.

PREGNANT PERIODS IN JAMAICAN HISTORY

The Earl of Carlisle's successor, Sir Thomas Lynch, (1680) announced that "His Majesty, upon the Assembly's humble address, was pleased to restore us to our beloved form of making laws; wherein we enjoy beyond dispute all the deliberative powers in our Assembly that the House of Commons enjoy in their houses." The King at the same time relinquished his claim to the quit rents, then estimated to be worth £1,460 per annum.

It is interesting to note that one of the important laws now passed was the one enacting that "freeholders of known residence are not subject to arrest and being held to bail in civil process." The then novel procedure was the: issue of a summons. (Later, as is well known, the privilege was extended to mis-demeanours; but it is a privilege ,still more honoured in the breach than in the observance by the police in Jamaica, causing much unnecessary indignity to an accused and mach extra trouble to the police and to the courts.)

Trade began to flourish anew; but the scarcity of labour resulted in the kidnapping and transportation of a large number of English labourers.

In spite of the restoration of the Constitution, Royal approval was still withheld ‑from many of the laws, notably the important act stating that the laws of England were in force in Jamaica. Indeed this Act was expressly disallowed. For half a century the sovereign was advised to withhold assent to the laws as a form of pressure for the upkeep of the local forts out of local revenues. It was not until 1728 that a compromise was effected.

Lawyers in Jamaica were not in good odour with constituted authority, as was shewn by an official letter to the Earl of Carlisle which was for a long time preserved in the island Council Chamber. The letter referred to the law which Modyford had introduced declaring the law of England to be in force in Jamaica: "Thus my lord did to encourage vexatious and troublesome proceedings, that the whole wealth of the island came into the hands of attorneys and solicitors; and became so grievous that the Assembly in Sir Thomas Lynch's time made a law that every man plead his own cause. This did rather hurt than good; for the lawyers being suppressed and the laws continuing as voluminous as ever, the cunningest knave carried all before him; and indeed none .but such as intended to cozen everybody durst or did become administrators to the dead or guardians to children; so that perceiving the wolves increase, they were forced to let go the tamer devours the lawyers.”

It was during the brief Governorship of the Earl of Inchiquin (1690‑,1692) that an early and serious slave rebellion occurred. The runaway negroes came down from the hills in marauding expeditions and were joined by the slaves at the Suttons plantation in Clarendon. As the records of the day naively relate, the insurgents had no reasonable cause of complaint ‑ except of course their kidnapping in Africa and their servitude in Jamaica.

On June 7, 1692, occurred the terrible earthquake which overwhelmed Port Royal: "Wharves ponderous with spoil sank instantaneously and water stood five fathoms deep where a moment before the crowded streets had displayed the glittering treasures of Mexico and Peru." A devout local annalist records: "Thus vanished the glory of the most flourishing emporium in the New World by a succession of tremendous judgments resembling those visitations of an offended Deity on some cities of the Old World, where an iniquitous race was overwhelmed in sudden and unexpected ruin. Large sums of money, arising from the treasures of unknown or lost proprietors, fell into the hands of many individuals; and, amongst others, into those of Sir William Beeston, who was charged by the Assembly ten years afterwards with having apportioned a considerable share to his own use. One loss was irrecoverable, and is still severely felt, that of all the official papers and public records of the island, whose history is thereby rendered so obscure and incomplete."

In the year 1694 the claim of the Upper House to seriously interfere with the course of legislation came into the open. Edward Long in his History of Jamaica (1774) traces the course whereby the Governor's Council arrogated to it,‑elf rights and privileges in legislative matters similar to those acquired by the House of Lords in England. Now a message was sent from the Assembly to the Council question‑ the Council's right to interfere with money bills. The Council claimed that the Assembly's message was "an unworthy reflection on their majesties (William and Marys) Lieutenant‑Governor and his Board"; and the Council claimed that the right not only to reject 'but also to amend money bills and to apply public moneys was part of their rights and privileges. This was a serious constitutional matter which gave rise to prolonged controversy. To avoid the issue, the Assembly was dissolved.

About this time the fugitive slaves (now known as Maroons) who had formed several settlements in remote strongholds attacked under their famous hero leader Cudjoe. During the succeeding forty seven years the intermittent war continued; and is reflected in the enactment of forty four laws; and, it is estimated, Government expenditure of £240,000.

The population of the island under British rule, commencing with the soldiery of Penn and Venables, had been considerably reinforced by the importation of slaves captured in Africa and purchased by British traders and transported by means of ships of the British Slave Trade, which was to prove very lucrative both to African chiefs and British merchants. It was not possible to bring about abolition of the trade until the industrial revolution afforded other lucrative outlet for the investment of British capita. The British slave trade actually lasted until 1807.

By the turn of the century (1698) Jews in the island had become a body of considerable wealth; and sought without avail to obtain express legislative extension of civil liberties, which appeared to be implicit in the Windsor ;declaration, but was de facto denied to them. Next came the settlers from the ill starred Darien Colony, who were at last allowed to join the settlers from Surinam, and settled around Bluefields. The Surinam settlers had come when Surinam had been ceded to the Dutch in 1673 in exchange for the cession to Britain of the Dutch province of New York.

In 1701 scandal broke over the head of the Governor Sir William Beeston on his refusal to give account of the vast treasure believed to have been found after the Port Royal earthquake; and on his failure to account for the disposal of the King' a bounty of £4,000 given to relieve the sufferers of the French invasion of the island under Du Casse in 1694.

In January 1703 Port Royal was again destroyed by fire; and this event gave new impetus to the settlement and growth of Kingston.

It was under the governorship of General Handasyde that the Crown renewed the demand for permanent revenue from Jamaica, offering in return to confirm all the legislation passed during the past twenty one years. Controversy continued, accentuated by differences between the two houses on revenue matters, and was not re.‑,olved by successive dissolutions.

Attempts to forbid the rebuilding of Port Royal had failed. The law on the subject had been disallowed. Spanish Town became a flourishing social and political centre.

The nine years up to April 1711 had been turbulent political years, mostly pivoting about revenue matters. Within nine year.) there had 'been fifteen sessions and eight different Assemblies. Revenue bills had been passed to last for only three months under fears of interference from Council or Governor. Now the Crown forbade revenue bills of less that twelve months duration.

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

Competent historians credit the emergence of Christianity as the predominant religion in the Roman empire to a variety of organisational advantages enjoyed by the cult. Their organisation surpassed that of all other private religions. By the first century of their existence they had instituted a well organised body of clergy, possessing wide powers of discipline over the laity. By the time of Marcus Aurelius (second century) the clerical hierarchy was complete in all essentials, with a unique system of inter‑communication.

In the early days of the third century a critical step forward was taken in the institution of bishops, who proceeded to convene synods throughout the Roman provinces, under which finances were organised and a uniform creed formulated. In the reign of Constantine provincial synods were supplemented by ecumenical congresses. By 330 the administrative framework of the Church Universal was also complete in all essentials.

The spread of Christianity was assisted by its special literature, the four Gospels being accepted as authoritative. By the time of Constantine the whole body of Christian sacred literature had been codified into the New Testament, and made accessible in several Latin versions. (The sensitive jealousy of the hierarchy on the question of vulgar access to the Scriptures was to come later). The task of revising and amplifying the Christian Creed, which had been begun in the Epistles of Paul, was carried on by Church Fathers, mostly Greek, among whom Clement and Origen (c.200) were pioneers.

From the time of Marcus Aurelius the Church also kept its own historical records, including the Acts of the Martyrs. In the days of Constantine the famous Palestinian Bishop, Eusebius, (264‑340) collected the various traditions into a standard history of the Church, which was nevertheless subject to some of the inaccuracies of traditions and the spurious interpellations of the times.

The earliest apologetic Christian literature was that of Aristides and Melito in the reign of Antoninus (middle second century). Under Marcus Aurelius, his tutor Cornelius Fronto and the famous Celsus, by their attacks on the Christian pretensions, drew famous Christian rejoinders. In the fourth century the polemics of the Pagan philosophers stimulated intensified Christian propaganda, culminating in St. Augustine's De Civitate Dei (354‑430) , which was accepted as the classic justification of the Christian faith. A famous example of Christian polemical writing is Tertullian's Apologia (c. 160‑230) .

Tertullian was indeed the stormy petrel of early Christianity. He was a non‑celibate early Father and Presbyter. In middle life he went over to the Montanists, and wrote several books in defence of that heresy. His defection is alleged .by some (arid disputed by others) to have been due to disappointed ambition. The article on Tertullian in the monumental "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology" by the learned William Smith exhibits not only the great erudition and uncompromising violence of expression of this famous renegade Father of the early Church, .but also gives valuable insight into tine milieu within which the Church had its early struggles.

Historians find it difficult to assess the relative moral standards of Christians, Jews and Pagans in the Roman empire of the day; but Christians justifiably quote to their credit one of their most determined opponents, the emperor Julian (361‑363), who exhorted Pagans to imitate the practical helpfulness of Christians in tending the sick and relieving the poor.

By the time of Constantine, Christians had largely lived down the prejudice against them, which had been largely due to their exclusiveness and self-righteousness and notable enduring friendships were being formed between individual Pagans and Christians. After many vicissitudes the Christian Church emerged under Constantine into an era of settled freedom and power.

As the Church gained wealthy adherents and strength, it had tended to shed those aspects of practice which made it seem anti‑social in the Roman world. As it became more sociable and powerful, .both the Church and constituted authority seemed to sense the feasibility and advantages of a reconciliation between the State and this alien faith.

Constantine, following the example of his father, Constantius, had given complete tolerance to the Christians in the West, so also had his protagonist, Maxentius. Maximin, in the East, had alternately persecuted and tolerated Christianity, according as he had to press or pacify Galerius. Galerius himself, in withdrawing his edict against the Christians, gave evidence that he valued their alliance.

By 312 Constantine was master of the West. With his murder of Licinius, he became in 324 master of the whole Roman empire. Thereupon Christianity emerged as the favoured cult of the empire. Constantine nevertheless decreed toleration for all cults, and retained for himself the pagan title of Pontifex Maximus; and figured on the coins and medals as a devotee of Apollo, Mars, Herakles, Mithra and Zeus. But he gave the Christian clergy annual allowances and supported the Church's widows and virgins. He restored the possessions previously taken from believers; and decreed that all their priests should be exempt from municipal burdens. His edicts placed the finances of the Church on a firm basis. So great was the gain accruing to Christian priests that laws were passed limiting the number of the clergy, and restraining priests and bishops from further enriching themselves by lending out money at interest. Christianity, gaining size and power, had (become lucrative.

In the days of Constantine, Christianity was a long way from being the universal religion of the Roman empire; but the Christians had planted their propaganda cells in every Roman province. Their clergy had become a powerful aristocracy; and they had gained the adherence of the intellectuals. In the middle of the fourth century their formidable opponent, the Emperor Julian, conceded the ultimate victory in the future to Christianity.

Constantine's deference to his Christian advisers is revealed in his legislation on matters of private morality, and in the institution of a compulsory Sunday as a day of rest. In his new capital Constantine prohibited the construction of pagan temples but his religious policy was substantially one of general toleration. The persecuting activities of a privileged Christian Church belong to later reigns.

Constantine is said to have been converted to Christianity in 312. If he was, his murder of his colleague Licinius and his son Crisphus in 324 drew no known rebuke from the Christian Fathers. And while he presided at the Council of Nicaea in 325, which settled the Nicene Creed as orthodox, it was not until 337, with death imminent, that he declared his intention of becoming a Christian and received baptism.

Was Constantine a Christian when he established Christianity as the religion of the State; or was Christ for him just one more god in the pantheon?

KONNI ZILLIACUS

Konni Zilliacus, who may justly be styled "apostle of peace", has written a new book: "A New Birth of Freedom?. World Communism since Stalin". Preparatory to a review of this most important book, it is well that readers of the "Comments" should learn something about this dedicated man.

He has long been a member of the British Labour Party, which, with all its faults, he feels is the best bet for decent politics in Britain and the world.

When, in the early 1940s, Aneurin Bevan, Michael Foot, R. H. Crossman and others formed a left wing caucus of the British Labour Party, we find Zilliacus not admitted. On enquiry I learnt that it was because he was "too uncritical" of Soviet Russia.

When the Labour Party again came to power, Zilliacus, who had been commissioned to write the election manifesto of the Party on Foreign Affairs denounced the Party for having betrayed the election pledges, as indeed it had. He was expelled from the Party, and, I think, for a time lost his seat in Parliament. He suffered for his political honesty.

When Zilliacus in 1952 brought out his "Tito of Yugoslavia", I, for one, did him the injustice of believing that he had written the book to ingratiate himself with the Labour Party. (Perhaps I was led astray by more tendentious and less objective writers like Klugman and Burchett). I was to find that Zilliacus has never faltered in journalistic integrity.

Zilliacus's father was a member of the Swedish minority in Finland in the time of Czar Nicholas II, and was exiled for revolutionary tendencies. That is how his son, Konni, became an Englishman. His wife, Konni's mother, was an American of Scot descent, a strong liberal and a supporter of women's suffrage.

From 1917 to 1919 Zilliacus was an intelligence officer in the British "military mission" in Siberia, a camouflaged intervention movement, fathered, I learn from other sources, by Winston Churchill.

For nineteen years Zilliacus served in the Information section of the League of Nations ,Secretariat at Geneva, where he had first‑hand experience of the hollowness of power politics. One of his jobs was to follow Soviet affairs.

"Geneva drove home the lessons learned from Finland and Siberia, the sense of the Russian national background and content of the new society in the Soviet Union. I can understand the point of view of Western Communists and anti‑Communists who regard Soviet Communism as a promise or threat for their own countries. But to me the Russian revolution has always seemed too Russian to spread except to countries that missed the French revolution, and, even then, only in their natural versions".

From 1925 until now Zilliacus has been preaching peace by intelligent political understanding and anticipation. In 1946, 1947 and 1948 he visited the East European countries and talked with their leading men (He is an expert linguist). In 1947 he visited the Soviet Union, and had the privilege of long talks with Stalin and Molotov. His reporting integrity did not suit Communist sensitiveness. He got in wrong with every camp.

He was expelled from the British Labour Party; he was refused admission in the U.S.A.; and at the same time he was violently denounced in the Soviet Union and the "People's Democracies". (He had maintained that Tito should be supported, because "he was defending the all‑important principle that the relations between Socialist states should be based on equality, mutual respect for each other's national independence and non‑interference in each other's internal affairs".)

In the early 1930s, Victor Gollanez (himself, like Zilliacus and Harold Laski, a second generation immigration Englishman) was rendering immense service to liberal journalism with his five shillings editions of worthwhile books. In 1935 he published Zilliacus's "Inquest on Peace ‑an analysis of the National Government's foreign policy" over the penname of "Vigilantes". "The authors of `The Dying Peace', as the title of the pamphlet indicated, were aware in 1933 that the national Government's foreign policy would, unless it were drastically changed, end in a catastrophe of some sort ‑ probably a war". That was the beginning of Zilliacus's long journalistic career as a realist in foreign affairs. There followed his "Road to War", " Why the League failed" and "Why we are losing the Peace". His warning went unheeded by the makers of British foreign policy. World War II followed.

In 1944, Gollancz, who had some time earlier extended his services in the famous Left Book Club editions, published Zilliacus's "Mirror of the Past”: "Studying the past is chiefly of interest as an aid to understanding the present. Today it has become literally vital to understand what is happening in the present in order to know what we must do in the near future to prevent a third world war". The book is a study in "international anarchy, imperialism and power politics".

In 1949 Zilliacus wrote specially for and first published in a Penguin edition his famous "I choose Peace", a strong plea for understanding between Soviet Russia and the West, and "to cure fatalism about war and apathy about world affairs".

In 1952 came his "Tito of Yugoslavia", and now in 1958 his "A new Birth of Freedom? World Communism since Stalin".

It is significant of the tolerant understanding of Zilliacus that in spite of the fact that George Frost Kennan had along with Winston Churchill, President Truman and Forrestal, been an early architect of America's "Containment Policy", Zilliacus recognized, as early as 1954 (four years before Kennan's famous B.B.C. broadcasts) that Kennan was one of. the more advanced liberal thinkers within the American right wing. I strongly suspect that Zilliacus must have had the advantage then of personal talks with Kennan, who had no doubt by that time recognised the futility of the Truman Doctrine.

Members of the legal profession are shocked and bewildered by the convergent attack on Barrister Peter Evans by Barrister Peter Evans and his lordship Judge Small.

Volume 3. Number 4. August 1958

CAUSERIES

Lebanon is a small Arab country, a little smaller than Jamaica, touching on the Mediterranean, Syria and Israel; and is the only Arab country formally accepting the "Eisenhower Doctrine".

Certain historical sequences are germane to the present imbroglio (We write on July 16.)

On October 1, 1946 an official American release announced: Units of the American fleet have been in the Mediterranean and will continue to be there to support American forces in Europe, carry out American policy and diplomacy and for purposes of experience, morale and education of personnel of the fleet.

The Baghdad Pact, about which Dulles was very active, had an adverse effect on Egyptian relations with the West. This was accentuated by America's abrupt withdrawal from the promised financing of the Aswan Dam project. Egypt and Soviet Russia were brought closer together. Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal Co.

The Anglo‑French Egyptian adventure followed; but, owing to Eden's anxieties to preserve a somewhat thin political camouflage, the adventure failed to secure the requisites of international aggression, naively that to gain the approval of friendly nations it mast be short, snappy and successful.

Intervention in the affairs of Lebanon has certainly increased tension between Soviet Russia and the West in the

affairs of Iraq (still nearer to Russia than Lebanon) the world may well be on the brink of World War III.

The Eisenhower Doctrine declares: "The independence and integrity" of Middle East Nations is

"vital to (U.S.) national interest and world peace" and empowers the President "to use armed force to

assist any such nation requesting assistance against armed aggression by any country controlled by

international communism".

PREGNANT PERIODS OF JAMAICAN HISTORY

Certain mileposts stand out in Jamaican history, among them being: (a) the English conquest of the island which resulted in an English settlement of the island (b) the development of plantation economy, which by virtue of the British slave trade, brought African slaves to the island in large numbers (c) the paucity of white women, the exigency of plantation rules, the breakdown of English marriage conventions in the distant island and the sexual attractions and domestic qualities of the Negro slave girls, all of which contributed to the production of a considerable number of "persons of colour" by way of progeny (d) the peculiar conditions of large areas of waste land, which stimulated the slaves with the consent and connivance of their masters, to produce "ground provisions", gain access to the markets, and thus acquire a money economy and social contacts (e) the arrival of the missionaries, who gave enlightenment to the slaves and fostered that native self‑respect among human beings which abhorred slavery (f) the rise in wealth and culture and power of the free persons of colour and the removal of their civil disabilities (g) emancipation from slavery.

Items (e) and (f) combined to bring about the slave revolt of 1831‑'32. For side by side with the peaceful struggle of free persons of colour for the removal of their civil disabilities went the anti‑slavery campaign, which, by reason of the intransigence of the local plantocracy (manifested after the slave revolt) hastened the process of emancipation from slavery, which was the last significant act in the Jamaican drama up to the time of the accession to the British throne of Queen Victoria.

Today we deal with the remarkable slave revolt of 1831‑'32.

It is a curious comparative factor of Jamaican history and patriotism that while most other peoples remember with pride their periods of oppression, Jamaican leaders discourage such remembrance. School gardens and the celebration of the first of August are frowned on as being reminiscent of the condition of slavery; while there is little knowledge of or pride in the fact that one hundred and fifty years of slavery were punctuated by thirty slave revolts, or an average of one revolt every five years.

From the time of the Registry Bill of 1815, the loud and unguarded expressions of resentment among

the planters against the abolitionists in Britain and even against the British Parliament, served to implant in the minds of the slaves a suspicion that emancipation was imminent, but would be strenuously resisted by their masters. When the revolt at last came, it was generally believed among the slaves that freedom had been granted and was being perfidiously withheld by the masters, and it was also generally believed by the planters that the missionaries had incited the slaves to revolt.

Indeed there was much in the innocent texts of the missionaries that the superstitious will to believe might and did distort into omens and portents. "The star in the east" was distorted into the star at the corner of the moon. When this latter appeared, it was to be a sign and a portent. Thereupon all slaves must down tools. If they did not, they would remain slaves forever, even if the King of England gave them their freedom. It was a short step from belief in the portent to the belief that the portent had actually appeared. If Daddy Sharp said that the missionaries had foretold the portent, who were they to disbelieve Daddy Sharp ‑ and the missionaries?

Samuel Sharp was a slave belonging to a lady residing at Montego Bay. He was a literate and devout member of the Baptist Church. He was a man of sterling character, beloved by his employer and her family, and he exercised great influence among his fellow slaves. He was convinced, like his fellow slaves, that the "free paper" had come from England, and was being suppressed.

Daddy Sharp was a convinced believer in nonviolence. He advised that work should not be resumed after the Christmas holidays. He counseled and enjoined complete non‑violence.

Others counseled the destruction by fire of the cane-pieces and works; for, they argued, if the means of production remained intact, they would be compelled at the point of the gun to work; but Daddy Sharp stood firm on non‑violence. Either violent counsels prevailed or some drunken men started the conflagration. Perhaps, as Henry Bleby recounts, the conflagrations continued because the slaves were infuriated by the shooting which soon commenced. In any event, wide spread incendiarism eventuated, and a full scale revolt was soon in progress.

The second in command was Gardiner, head waggoner on Greenwich Estate. He was actually a commander in the field. Next to Gardiner was "lieutenant‑colonel" Dove, then came "captain" McCail of Prospect and "captain" Alexander Campbell, popularly called "Lord Howe". Among the "lieutenants" were James Miller Fine, Donald McIntosh, James McIntosh, John Largia, Thomas Simpson and W ilna McDonald. In the main they commanded incendiary parties. There is no evidence that the slaves planned anything more violent than securing their freedom by destroying the means of production.(The two contemporary authorities on the revolt and its suppression are Bernard Martin on the side of the planters and Henry Bleby on the side of the missionaries. Bleby was detailed by government to take statements from the captured rebels.)

The usual Christmas holidays, during which time the slaves were released from their daily chores, were in full swing. Until the evening of Tuesday the 27th December, 1831, there had been no signs of insurrection, although Martin notes signs of prevailing truculence in the preceding months. At sunset some sugar estates were seen ablaze. Bernard Martin was of opinion that the sight of the trashhouse at Bellfield Estate in flames was the pre-concerted signal. The contagion of incendiarism spread rapidly to Argyle, Retrieve, Montpelier, Lapland &c, and through most of the adjacent estates in the parish of St. James. The hills around Montego Bay are described as presenting "a most beautiful and picturesque amphitheatre elegantly studded with sugar estates".

Within fifteen minutes enormous fires were seen, and conch shells were heard accompanied by huzzas, and cane-fields were set ablaze. On most of the surrounding mountains signal fires sprang up.

The militia at once proceeded to the scenes of desolation. Only the old and disabled and the sick and children among the slave population were to be seen. The rest had fled to the woods. Not a blacksmith's shop was destroyed. The next evening at sunset all was ablaze again.

Such is the account of Bernard Martin.

Henry Bleby places the first fire not at Belfield but at Kensington. He maintains that the incendiarism was the work of a few ungovernable spirits, who broke into and plundered a rum store; and in their intoxicated condition entirely destroyed the planned non‑violent nature of the revolt. Bleby blames the subsequent violence of the slaves on the incompetence and cowardice of the militia, while extolling the judgment and courage of the military. Beaumont, who was in charge of a military task force, himself vindicated the reputation of the missionaries and scored the incompetence of the militia.

(To Be Continued)

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

Constantine was bewildered and angry at the endless strife of the Christian clergy. The divinitas (divine wrath), he declared, would fall on emperor, clergy and laity alike if the clergy would not leave one another at peace. He besought them to leave points of theory alone, or at least to imitate the pagans and dispute without hatred. The feuds of the clergy were lampooned in the theatres, while Constantine threatened reprisals against intransigent schismatics.

Nevertheless the Church as an organized body appeared to be valuable to the State; so Constantine assimilated it to the body politic and undertook its external administration.

The four leading bishoprics of Rome, Antioch, Alexandria and Constantinople were equated with the four praetorian prefectures, and a clerical hierarchy was established parallel with the gradations of civil administration.

Christianity had assimilated many of the pagan ceremonials; and Constantine confirmed the assimilation when he decreed that Sunday should be a day of rest albeit not in later puritanical sense. The Christians had from an early date expressed a differentiation from Judaism in substituting Sunday as the Christian sabbath, as the day of Christ's resurrection. It was mainly the Mithraists (for whom coincidentally the sign of the cross made on the forehead was the supreme symbol) who had established the old usage of calling the Sunday (the first day of the week) "the day of the Lord", Mithra, as the Sun, being the first of the planetary spirits on whose names the names of the days of the week were based. Critics of the sacred validity of Christianity have made great play of the assimilation of Christian ritual, beliefs and practice to well‑established pagan ritual, beliefs and practices; some partly on this, and partly on weightier, yet still inconlusive reasoning going so far as to question the historicity of Christ.

The year after he attained sole power (325 A.D.) Constantine summoned a General Council at his palace of Nicaea in Bithynia to settle the theological status of Christ and the establishment of a creed. The question had already been settled against Paul of Samosata and the Sabellians, who sought to make the Son a mere aspect or manifestation of the Father. The established current prevailing dogma was now that God and Jesus were in a way separate Persons; but Arius tried to be more explicit. He declared that "the Son is totally and essentially distinct from the Father"; and the old charge of "patripassians" was revived. But Arius; driven out of the Church as heretic by two Alexandrian Councils, was merely made more recalcitrant.

In the result, Constantine's Council of Nicaea by majority vote settled the Creed in the following terms: "We .believe in one God, the Almighty Father, Creator of all things visible and invisible And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who alone was begotten of the Father (that is of the substance of the Father) God of God, Light of Light (very God of very God, begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father) through whom all was made that is in" heaven and earth, who for us men and for our salvation came down and became flesh, became man, suffered and rose on the third day, is ascended to heaven and will come to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit."

The clauses in brackets were inserted as dogmatic formulas to refute and confound Arius. Hitherto there had been much freedom about ritual and liturgic formulas. Perhaps in latter days Church and congregation alike have reverted to pre‑Arian nonpreoccupation with the bewildering mysteries of the "homoiousios" or the "homoousios" ("similar" or "the same essence" as God). In the event the "Trinity" of Athanasius, the great protagonist of Arius, triumphed.

Arius was banished and the leading bishops on his side of the dispute deposed. Five years later however Constantine recalled him from exile; and the reinstated Arlan bishops set about persecuting their former persecutors, while Athanasius was deprived of office by the Council of Tyre (355 A.D.). But Arius died in 336 and Constantine the year after, having on his death‑bed at last received baptism, and that from an Arlan bishop. Within a few years the succeeding emperor Constans threatened, war against his brother Constantine if the latter did not restore Athanasius.

The quarrel has the quality of being unintelligible to us; but, as in many other questions which in the course of time have lost their savour, there was probably a sub‑stratum of importance. It should be borne in mind that the early Christian Church was under fire from very astute pagan polemists on the charge of polytheism; and had to maintain both monotheism and the divinity of Christ. It was probably sensitiveness on this point that accounted at least in part .for the virulence of the controversy, and the ingenuity displayed in the verbal and philosophical refinements of the relatively early centuries of Christianity. One important fact however emerged, namely that Christianity was now the concern of the Roman rulers, not as a despised, but as an accepted religion. Furthermore it is possible that the authoritative interference of the emperors did prevent Christianity from splitting up into a host of small and ineffectual sects.

The Arius‑Athanasius controversy had centred in Alexandria. Now Africa, a stronghold of the Trinity, was to be assailed by the schism of the Donatists, a puritan revolt, commenced over the election of a bishop of Carthage, and receiving its name from one or two bishops of the name of Donatus. In the year 330 one of the Councils numbered 270 Donatist bishops and still the schism grew. So the emperor took their temples from some of the schismatics, banished some of their bishops and put numbers to death.

Another powerful schism had arisen called Manichaeism, denouncing the old Testament and rejecting the four Gospels in favour of a new "inspired" gospel. So great was the zeal of these schismatics that systematic and destructive persecution was required for the uprooting of the schism.

Constantine left the empire to his three sons, Constantine II, Constantius and Constans and two of his nephews. By a process of eliminating liquidation, as well as the fortunes of war, Constantius became sole emperor; and at the instigation of the Church began the persecution of paganism and also of schismatics. Constantius, still retaining the pagan title of Pontifex Maximus, passed stringent laws against paganism; but to a large extent the persecution remained theoretical. But Constantius did help the Church .by giving economic privileges in the way of higher stipends to the clergy and doles of corn to the congregations. As head of the Church he presided at Councils; and half‑heartedly he encouraged Arianism and persecuted Athanasiantsm, while the orthodox of the Church stood helplessly by. Indeed under pressure from the emperor one Council declared for Arianism, while torture and massacres proceeded apace. In one massacre at Constantinople (342) three thousand people lost their lives in the forcible re‑instatement of an Arian or semi‑Arian bishop.

BOOK REVIEW "A NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM? WORLD COMMUNISM SINCE STALIN."By K. ZILLIACUS (Monthly Review Press ‑ 1958)

During his long career as a political journalist, Zilliacus has consistently pressed unerring fingers on the pulse of international affairs. Now we have his analysis of affairs in Communist countries since Khruschev at the twentieth Congress of the Soviet Union delivered his famous secret report which denigrated Stalin and the "personality cult" or hero worship of the Stalin era. (The Congress unanimously adopted a resolution to resolutely dispose of the personality cult as being alien to Marxism‑Leninism and to strictly apply the rules of Party conduct and the principles of collective leadership)

The author visited Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the autumn of 1956 while the ferment of de‑Stalinisation was active, and while unrest in Poland and Hungary was giving evidence of the spirit of freedom which was agitating minds in the Communist countries. The book gives an account of what he learnt on his visit.

Throughout the book the author elucidates conditions of thought in these countries. He had conversations with Khrushchev, Tito and other leaders, as well as with students and persons in various walks of life; and he gives us an intimate view of the polemics raging at the time.

He makes it clear that the people of Soviet Russia are completely loyal to the system of the oligarchy or dictatorship of the Communist Party. The fact that electors are not free to name their own candidates leaves them unconcerned. They are completely creatures of their environment of Communist Party control as we are creatures of our environment of parliamentary democracy or (to interpose a simile of our own) as the devout Anglican is a creature of his ecclesiastical environment of the Trinity. They are quite honestly incapable of grasping the idea that democracy may mean that people should have the right to have issues decided by their freely elected representatives. For them, policy decisions are rightly taken by the Communist Party, while the job of Soviet Councillors is merely to keep the executives of Communist Party policy up to mark by supplying information and constructive criticism on their work and indicating how the people are feeling.

It appears that an "iron curtain" no longer exists. The author experienced complete freedom in exchanging views openly with leaders of thought, executives and the general body of thinking people; while observing that the country was wide open to visitors and tourists. He was actually asked by the Academy of Science to give a talk to ,students on "the transition to socialism by parliamentary means."

His long talk with Khrushchev was illuminating on a subject in which the author was himself well versed, namely the puzzling and varying relations between Soviet Russia and Yugoslavia. Shortly put, Khrushchev insists on the necessity for a solid international front by all Communist countries, maintaining in effect two international camps; while Tito is working for complete reconciliation with co‑existence under the all‑inclusive banner of United Nations. Soviet Russia wants hegemony, Yugoslavia wants complete national freedom of thought and expression.

An extremely valuable picture is given of the aspirations for freedom of expression which were released by Khrushchev’s own disclosures of the horrors of the Stalin era, a vivid picture too of the wise guidance which Gomulka exercised over the affairs of Poland and relations with Soviet Russia; and there is an interesting sidelight explaining the tragedy of Hungary.

The relations between East and West are judicially reviewed; and the wise reflections of the author maintain the high standard which he has consistently maintained throughout his long journalistic career from his "Inquest on Peace" as far back as 1935.

Zilliacus is perhaps one of the few political journalists of a socialist persuasion who has not yielded to social or political pressure to "eat his words". He has never emulated, far example, the recantation by Herbert Spencer (the "perplexed philosopher" of Henry George) of his notable "Social Statics" or by his contemporary John Strachey of his no less notable "Theory and Practice of Socialism". Zilliacus's record of courage and integrity is abundantly sustained in this his latest book. It is perhaps the most informative book on present day theory and practice in Communist countries.

Volume 3. Number 5. September 1958

CAUSERIES

Courtesy comprises the formal acceptance of another's personality; justice comprises recognition of his rights. The higher the social or economic status, the greater the compulsion of courtesy as a matter of justice.

The trained mind looks at affairs objectively; the disciplined mind acts intelligently.

To act intelligently it is necessary to try to understand the thoughts, motives and apprehensions of the man on the other side, even to the extent of seeing the affair through his eyes.

Legal training tends to produce a trained and disciplined mind, capable of acting intelligently.

Many good cases however have been lost through the lawyer being so wrapped up in his own side of the case that he fails to see the other side. From the same cause, many bad cases have been allowed to go to trial.

HISTORICAL CYCLES

America is slowly emerging from the 1948‑1958 cycle of reaction which followed on the relatively liberal Franklin D. Roosevelt era of 1933‑1945, which in turn had followed the reactionary period of 1920-1930. A reactionary period is usually illustrated by some outstanding miscarriage of justice; and the 1920‑1930 period of American reaction might well be known as the Sacco‑Vanzetti period, as the 1948‑1958 period might be known as the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and Morton Sobell period.

Around 1920 there was a wave of Bolshevik fears in America which were fomented by Government with its anxieties for the established system of free enterprise. Symptomatically Herbert Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, on March 21, 1921, exclaimed: "Europe cannot recover its economic stability until Russia returns to production. That requires the abandonment of their present economic system". His protagonist, Senator Borah, replied some years later: "So long as you have a hundred and fifty million people outlawed in a sense, it necessarily follows that you cannot have peace".

It was under Wilson, and before Harding, that the policy of hostility against Soviet Russia was formulated and implemented. During the succeeding years of Republican rule this antagonism continued to be grounded on economic and social considerations. Almost precisely the same alternating conditions were to prevail under Democratic Truman and Acheson and Republican Eisenhower and Dulles.

If psycopathology were to seriously concern itself with national hysteria, many of the phenomena of social history might be reinterpreted. Under Wilson one of those waves of national hysteria broke out under the guiding hand of Attorney General Palmer using as a weapon the then recently passed Espionage Act, as later, under the guiding hand of Attorney General Brownell, the Smith Act (passed in 1940 against fascism) and the McCarran Act were to be used for similar purposes.

Liberals of high standing protested in vain. As later, the newspapers were on the side of reaction and fed public hysteria with imaginary crime waves not borne out by official statistics.

On April 25, 1920, there was an atrocious hold‑up accompanied by the brutal murder of men in charge of a large sum of money provided for a Company's pay‑bill. Two humble Italians of known radical views (Sacco and Vanzetti) were the scapegoats. They were convicted and sentenced to death. The conviction on very thin circumstantial evidence shocked liberal conscience all over the world, as well as in America. For seven years the battle waged for retrial or reprieve. Protests and petitions for clemency came from the highest international quarters. The matter was political dynamite in America in view of the national hysteria; and the confession of a participator in the crime exculpating Sacco and Vanzetti was ignored. A detailed study of the case running into over five hundred pages was written by Osmond Fraenkel of the New York Bar. Howard 'Fast was to write a novel founded on fact entitled "The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti".

Protests came from the President of Czechoslovakia, Madame Curie, Professor Albert Einstein, La Fayette's grandson, Nansen, Dreyfus, Caillaux and many others.

For days long lines of liberals marched before the State House of Boston. Excitement grew as the date of execution came near. The paraders before the State House became more numerous and many were arrested.

As symptomatic of the prevailing hysteria, on the opening of the session of Congress in 1920 the Speaker had initiated the unseating of five members because they belonged to the socialist party.

Professor Felix Frankfurter of the Harvard Law School, later Judge of the Supreme Court, wrote a review of the case in which he expressed the opinion that the accused were entitled to a new trial.

As the time of the execution drew near, letters and petitions poured into Boston and Washington.

In various cities of Europe and the United States legations had to be put under guard. In others, police reserves were called out to watch for violence at mass meetings held in condemnation of the convictions. Everywhere parades and protests sprang up. In Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina general strikes were called. Newspapers in London and Paris deplored the event; and in Germany twelve prominent lawyers prepared and signed a statement decrying the execution of death sentence pronounced seven years before. In Morocco, Panama and Geneva popular demonstrations took place, and violence was reported from Sydney, Montevideo, Bucharest, Stockholm, Berlin, Prague, Athens and Copenhagen.

Nevertheless, when the parallel case of the Rosenbergs hit the headlines in the fifties, many Americans and others of this later generation had never heard of the betrayal of justice in the case of Sacco and Vanzetti.

PREGNANT PERIODS OF JAMAICAN HISTORY (1831 REVOLT)

Bleby places the loss of life among the Whites at less than a dozen. There are no official returns either way; but shootings and executions of the Negroes is believed to have run into several hundreds.

The historical significance of the revolt is the indirect effect it had in hastening emancipation.

During and after the suppression of the revolt a flood of persecutive mania broke out against the Missionaries, who were held by the plantocracy to be responsible for the revolt. Burchell (Baptist Missionary) who returned from England a few days after the revolt was arrested, but acquitted after suffering much hardship and ignominy. He had however to flee to America for safety, and afterwards reached England to join Knibb in his great fight for emancipation.

The case of the Moravian Minister Pfeiffer caused consternation even among the Whites, Bernard Martin being among those who defended his reputation and innocence.

Arrest, imprisonment, and trial were the fate of the most notable among the Baptist and Wesleyan Missionaries. One amazing feature of the counterrevolution was the destruction of the Missionary chapels, sometimes in broad daylight and often at the instigation of the newspapers. The new Baptist Chapel at Salter's Hill, St. James was destroyed by fire by the St. James Militia. The chapel at Falmouth was demolished by the St. Ann Regiment. The destruction of the Chapel at Stewart Town, of the spacious Baptist Chapel at Montego Bay and of the smaller one at Brown's Town followed in quick succession. The stout structure at Rio Bueno yielded to fire at the hands of the Trelawny Militia. The Mission premises at St. Ann's Bay were razed to the ground and the Baptist house of worship at Ocho Rios was destroyed by fire. At Lucea the Rector and other leading citizens pulled the chapel down; and shortly after the Chapel at Green Island was deliberately destroyed by fire. Burchell's house was burnt down and the benches, pews, pulpit and furniture of the stations at Gurney's Mount and Putney were also deliberately destroyed. The foregoing destruction of Baptist property accounted for a value of £23,000; while a considerable number of Wesleyan Chapels was also deliberately destroyed; and all this not during the revolt but within a period of two or three months after the revolt.

The formation of the infamous "Church Union" forms part of the history of the period. In 1826 the Rev. G. W. Bridges, Rector of St. Ann and author of the famous and learned "Annals of Jamaica" began to show hostility to the Missionaries. On Christmas night 1826 a party of the Militia fired into the Wesleyan Mission House at St. Ann's Bay. Mr. Bridges, being under suspicion of being implicated, defended himself by vehement letters and by a sermon in which he referred to the effect of the teaching of the Methodist preachers on the "unstable minds of the ignorant negroes". So strong was the feeling against the Missionaries even before the slave revolt that a Committee of the House of Assembly reported that "the principal object of the Missionaries in this island is to extort money from their congregations by every possible pretext, to obtain which recourse has been had to the most indecent expedients; that in order to further this object, and to gain an ascendancy over the negro mind. they inculcate the doctrines of equality and the rights of man". (In 1792 Thomas Paine had been prosecuted for libel alleged to have been published in his "Rights of Man".)

The historian Rev. W. J. Gardner reports: "The conduct of the Colonial Church Union, with such min as Rectors Heath and Bridges to urge it on, was far more reprehensible than that of the most misguided among the slaves. The latter fought for freedom the Union destroyed property and ill‑used those who fell into its hands that slavery might be established on a firmer basis and the progress of gospel truth retarded".

Finally the threat of the Union to drive the Missionaries from Jamaica induced Rev. William Knibb (Baptist Missionary) careless of his own safety nevertheless to leave the island and conduct a campaign in England furthering the cause of emancipation.

Intense feeling was aroused in England by the news of the atrocities perpetrated against the Missionaries; so that when Knibb reached England in June 1832 he was able to thrill the vast assembly at the annual meeting of the Baptist Missionary ;Society with his narrative of the persecutions and atrocities.

At that time the Society was endeavoring to moderate all expressions on the anti‑slavery movement, lest they should in popular opinion be implicated in the recent slave revolt. Knibb was warned by the Secretary to be most moderate in his expressions. It was a dramatic moment when the Secretary apprehensively pulled Knibb by the coat, and Knibb, pausing for a moment, shook himself free, and continued: "Whatever may be the consequence, I will speak. At the risk of my connection with the Society and all I hold dear, I will avow this; and if the friends will not hear me, I will turn and tell it to my God, nor will I desist till this, the greatest of curses‑slavery is removed". Knibb carried his audience with him. Enthusiasm was generated, which Knibb, joined later by Burchell, carried through the length and breadth of England and Scotland.

Knibb gave evidence before Committees of the House of Commons and the House of Lords. The knell of slavery in the British West Indies had sounded. The job that Daddy Sharp left uncompleted was helped on its way by the intransigence of the planters, the militia and the Church Union.

Bleby gives this description of Samuel Sharpe:

"He was of the middle size; his fine sinewy frame was handsomely moulded, and his skin as perfect a jet as can well be imagined. His forehead was high and broad and his nose and lips exhibited the usual characteristics of the negro race. He had teeth whose regularity and pearly whiteness a Court beauty might have envied, and an eye whose brilliancy was almost dazzling . . . . I heard him two or three times deliver a brief extemporaneous address to his fellowprisoners on religious topics, many of them being confined in the same cell, and I was amazed both at the power and freedom with which he spoke, and at the effect which was produced . . . . He appeared to have the feelings and passions of his hearers completely at his command . . . . Sharp acknowledged to me that he had, as an individual, no reason to find fault with the treatment he had received as a slave . . . . ; but he thought, and he learnt from the Bible, that the Whites had no more right to hold Black people in slavery than the Black people had to make the White people slaves; and for his own part he would rather die than live in slavery . . . . He expressed deep regret that such an extensive destruction of property and life had resulted from the conspiracy . . . ; but declared this formed no part of his plan . . . . He was not however to be convinced that he had done wrong in endeavouring to assert his claim to freedom".

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

Constantius beside subsidising the clergy and the congregations maintained a large number of Christian parasites. As head of the Church, he presided at Councils. As a semi‑Arian he persecuted Athanasianism. It is not surprising that with such a questionable head the moral standing of the Church was in parlous condition. An orthodox writer reports: "At each episcopal election or expulsion the most exalted sees of Christendom ‑ Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch ‑ furnished scenes that would have disgraced a revolution"; while Julian tells of the massacre of whole troops of "heretics", notably at Cyzicus and Samosata and of the utter destruction of whole towns and villages.

Under Julian there was a short Pagan revival. Educated as a Christian, he concealed his leaning to Paganism during the lifetime of Constantius. It was only when marching against Constantius that he avowed his religion and offered pagan sacrifices. On the death of Constantius and his access to sole power in 361 Julian proceeded to reinstate the ancient rites, and sought to elevate Paganism in theory and practice, to re‑endow the Pagan temples and to dis-endow the Christian Churches. Himself a man of great culture, he protected the Christian factions from each other, restored exiled heretics and (probably to discredit them) invited rival dogmatists to dispute in his presence. He wrote long and reasoned treatise against the Christian books and Creed.

Julian fell in battle against the Persians in 363; and it is believed that his defeat in battle went far to wean the superstitious soldiery from Mithraism to Christianity. (Their God had been defeated by the Christian God).

There has been much speculation as to whether, if Julian had lived as long as Constantine, Christianity would have been driven from the Roman world. It is to be noted that from 330 to 370, and again in the Sixth Century, the Persian kings succeeded by sheer bloodshed in crushing orthodox Christianity in their kingdom.

Julian was followed by the weak Jovian, and the latter by the forceful Valentinian. Both were professed Christians; but neither of them persecuted Paganism.

During the thirty years from the death of Constantine to the accession of Theodosius the Great the Church grew in wealth but not apparently in political power. Violent internal disputes continued but with some abatement. During the period (c.366) the final struggle of Damasus and Ursinus to secure by force the episcopal chair in Rome accounted for 137 dead in the Basilica, Damasus having hired gladiators in support of his cause. While in the Provinces the Church was more decorously represented, in North Africa the feud between the Donatists and the rest of the Churches had reached the stage of civil war with guerilla tactics.

The accession of Theodosius (379) marks the official establishment of Trinitarian Christianity, and the suppression of Arianism and Paganism. Theodosius. dying in 395, left the old cults finally disestablished both in Italy and the East. Under the shelter of persecuting edicts, monks and other enterprising "Reformers" exploited the opportunity to plunder and destroy Pagan shrines and property. It was probably during this period, when Pagans as a matter of policy were being Christianized, that the remarkable assimilation between Pagan and Christian rites and customs was intensified.

At the end of the fourth century began the series of convulsions which marked the break‑up of the Roman empire. A year after the death of Theodosius, Alaric (king of the Visigoths) ravaged Greece and invaded Italy; and invasion followed invasion until by the middle of the fifth century the West had lost Gaul, Spain and Africa; and in the year 476 Rome, thrice sacked, welcomed a Barbarian King.

The invasions did not adversely affect Christianity. The invaders, although not orthodox, were Christians. The Barbarians, like the Roman emperors, were very much alive to the cohesive force of the Church in aid of the State. It is even possible that Christianity facilitated the Barbarian conquest. It is a significant fact that all the great heresies, Marcionism, Montanism, Arianism, Manichaeism, Monophysitism and the Nestorian Church are found subsisting in the Eastern empire up to the seventh century.

Sad as are the reflections aroused by the stormy history of a religion of love and humility, it need hardly be said that human perfidy or vice in no way detracts from the intrinsic merit or virtue of a cause; and that the history of a religion is no exception to the rule. If a particular religion happens to be struggling for survival, the access to or struggle for power among contestants is no less demoralising in religion than in politics or in war. To the question, "what is wrong with Christianity?", throughout the ages may be given the apt answer: "The Christians"; and a similar answer may be given to the several questions: "What is wrong with Capitalism?", "What is wrong with Socialism?", "What is wrong with Communism?" Distortion of function is a factor always to be reckoned with in history.

TALL OAKS FROM LITTLE ACORNS GROW

World War II was precipitated because the French Ambassador at Berlin misunderstood the significance of the Carpatho‑Ukraine Pass; and Neville Chamberlain fell for his mistake. As Bismarck in 1870, favourable to France, was deflected into attacking her by the opportunity offered by the intransigence of the second Napoleon, so Hitler in 1939, favourable to Britain and (perhaps through Britain, relatively to) France, was deflected by‑ the ignorance of Chamberlain and Bonnet into attacking their countries instead of Soviet Russia, as he had planned to do. The story is little known; and will bear re‑telling, as an illustration of the issue of momentous events from a tiny error.

At Munich in October 1938 Chamberlain consummated the ruin of Czechoslovakia with deliberate intent and considerable political finesse, smugly concluded a non‑aggression pact with Hitler, and, returning to London, announced: "I have brought back peace with .honour. I think it is peace in our time". (Churchill .quipped: "France and Britain had to choose between war and dishonour. They choose dishonour; they will have war".)

It was an open secret that a decisive group of Western diplomats with Chamberlain at their head fervently hoped and fondly believed that a free hand to Hitler would result in a German‑Japanese attack on Soviet Russia; and accordingly the objective to be served by Munich (for in this Hitler and Chamberlain were at one) was to break up the l: ranco‑Soviet alliance and drive Soviet Russia out of the Councils of Europe. Czechoslovakia was informed that if she fought with Russia against Germany, Britain and France might not remain neutral and might supply arms and munitions to Germany. Thus was the stage set.

On December 15, 1938 Robert Coulondre, French Ambassador at Berlin, had reported: "The will for expansion in the east seems to me as undeniable on the part of the Third Reich as its disposition to put aside, at least for the present, any idea of the conquest of the West .... Germany has no claim in the direction of France . . . . German dynamism is not to be stopped . . . . and in military circles they already talk of the advance to the Caucasus and to Baku".

On March 15. 1939, Hitler, in breach of his pact with Chamberlain, seized Prague, the capital of truncated Czechoslovakia. In Parliament the next evening, Chamberlain categorically refused to censure Germany or to associate himself with the "charges of bad faith", which, he said, were being "bandied about". His foreign secretary, Sir John Simon, also categorically stated that Britain would not be drawn into guarantees which would hamper her freedom of action and make it dependent on the will of other nations.

On the 17th Chamberlain was to make a speech at Birmingham. It was known that up to that time Chamberlain had firmly resisted the pressure of dissidents in his own party who were urging .him to condemn Hitler. On that day however Coulondre reported a change of opinion on his part as to Hitler's intentions. He pointed out that Hitler had ceded the Carpatho‑Ukraine Pass to Hungary, proof positive, he claimed, that Hitler "before carrying out his vast programme to the East will first turn against the Western Powers". This was a fantastic conclusion; but it apparently impressed Chamberlain; for he now began to scatter his guarantees to Poland et al. Britain was to come to Poland's assistance if Germany, in the opinion of Poland, committed aggression against her independence. World War II followed probably just when Hitler was about to implement his tacit bargain with the West by preparing the terrain in Poland, which military commentators had already noted, was a sine qua non for the necessary attack on a broad front against Soviet Russia. Max Werner, the famous military critic had already dismissed as sheer fantasy the idea of attacks through narrow passes.

Gone for nothing now was all the build‑up of Germany by Britain, Britain's connivance at the march into the Rhineland, Austria, the butchery of Czechoslovakia, the rearmament of Germany in breach of the Versailles Treaty, and the pact permitting Germany to strengthen her fleet; a pact made without the knowledge or approval of the ally France.

It should not be concluded that Coulendre's fantastic error was the sole cause of Chamberlain's change of heart towards his erstwhile colleague Hitler. History is not exclusively determined by single factors. But Coulondre's fantasy, following on the pressure from the dissidents of his own party, appears to rave finally convinced or pressurised Chamberlain at the crucial moment so that it appeared to him that he and Hitler no longer had common objectives and must part company.

U.S. SENATE JULY 16. SENATOR MORSE DEFENDS CIVIL LIBERTIES

Senator Morse: There is pending before the Senate Foreign Relations committee the administration passport bill. The chief architects . .. . are Mr. Dulles and Mr. Murphy. I would describe their architectural work as an illegal unconstitutional house of legislative ill‑fame, because it is such a serious attack upon the basic liberties of the American people, and it is . . . . so in violation of the elemental principles of due process of law .... How could such a shocking proposal be made to the Congress of the United States by a President of the United States? ... . Never during my thirteen years of service in the Senate have I been so deeply moved. . .

Volume 3. Number 6. October 1958

CAUSERIES.

James Muir, Chairman and President of the Royal Bank of Canada, visited China this Summer on a fact finding mission. The following extracts are from his report on his mission.

Cost of living unbelievably low; in the cities good and immaculately kept hotel accommodation; laundry returned the same day; dry cleaning a matter of hours.

Saw one fly and one mosquito, and no sparrows in the cities.

The new irrigation and flood control dam in the Ming Tombs Valley, which is over 2,000 feet long and about 95 feet high, took only one hundred and forty days to complete; with 100,000 people working in three daily shifts. All work, described as voluntary, but certainly unpaid (military and voluntary workers); while the work was accomplished with little else than picks and shovels and bare hands.

There is an almost fanatical drive towards hygiene and physical culture.

"Unless the whole scene is a dream or one's sense of observation and appraisement is less than useless then we think the vast majority of the people of China have the government they want, a government which is improving their lot, a government in which they have confidence, a government which stands no chance whatever of being supplanted."

The report is an urgent summons to Canada to get out and get some of the Chinese trade: "I believe there is good and legitimate trade to be done. Other Western people are getting it. Canada will be negligent and unfair to herself if she does not get her share."

CONTEMPT OF COURT (Colonial Style).

Judges functioning in the Colonies have been notoriously hypersensitive in the matter of judicial dignity; and a judgment in the Privy Council (related below), although deciding against the Judge "with costs", may be guardedly read as tentatively condoning colonial judicial hypersensitiveness. The recent "Woman fined £10 for contempt" (for declining to address Judge McCarthy as "Sir") might lend interest to quotation from this 1899 Privy Council case above referred to (reported in 81 Law Times at p 158.

The appellant, one MacLeod, was a barrister practicing in the St. Vincent Court, the judge was the acting Chief Justice. The "Federalist" was a newspaper published in Grenada. The particular number referred to the acting Chief Justice in an editorial as follows: " . . . is reducing the judicial character to the level of a clown . . . It does not seem . . . that the acting Chief,. Justice of St. Vincent is capable of maintaining the noble traditions of the British Bench . . . If the people can have no faith in the findings of the Chief Justice, they may doubtless be tempted to redress their own wrongs . . . There is no doubt that the administration of justice in St. Vincent is rotten and corrupt, and that except some one be appointed to the Bench who will inspire confidence and respect, the already oppressed peasantry may be goaded into madness." A letter from a correspondent in the same issue of the paper, on which indeed the editorial was .founded, referred to the acting Chief Justice as "a man of the Torquemada type, narrow, bigoted, vain, vindictive and unscrupulous" and added: "It is the general opinion that Mr. has proved ,himself incapable of filling the important post of judge . . . "

The Appellant, MacLeod, was agent in St. Vincent for the "Federalist". On receiving his copy of the paper, he called in the afternoon as usual at the library, and met a. friend, Wilson, who had not yet received his copy of the Federalist, nor had the librarian. The Appellant then stated that he had received his copies and offered one to the librarian, who handed it to Wilson. Thereupon the acting Chief Justice cited the Appellant to show cause why he should not be committed for contempt of Court. The Appellant filed affidavit setting out the above facts and that he had not read the paper and had not the slightest idea that it contained the relevant article or the letter.

The acting Chief Justice stayed the commitment until the next day to enable the Appellant to apologise. On the next day the Appellant said: "May it please the Court, ‑ Since the adjournment of the court last night I have seriously considered my position. I am aware of the grave responsibility which rests upon me. I am aware that the loss of freedom (the commitment was for fourteen days) may entail want upon those dependent upon me. But I have come to the conclusion that I cannot conscientiously do what I have been asked, to do, viz. make an affidavit pleading guilty to, and expressing; contrition for, a crime of which I know I am innocent. I am prepared to express regret that I should have inadvertently and innocently, without knowledge that it contained matter which this Court has held to be libellous and a contempt of court, lent the man Wilson a paper for his personal use for one night. But beyond that my conscience does not allow me to go. Should your Honour unfortunately think that such an expression of regret is insufficient, I have no alternative 'but to submit, under protest, and under reserve of all rights as to appeal or otherwise, to the judgment that your Honour has been pleased to pass upon me".

The Judge refused to accept the apology, which he considered insufficient, as not containing an expression of regret by the Appellant for the, nature of the publication itself.

Lord Morris read the judgment of the Privy Council on the appeal

" . . . The power summarily to commit for contempt of court is considered necessary for the proper administration of justice. It is not to be used for the vindication of the judge as a person. He must resort to action for libel or criminal information. Committal for contempt of court is a weapon to be used sparingly and always with reference to the interests of the administration of justice. Hence when a trial has taken place and the case is over, the judge and the jury are given over to criticism. It is a summary process, and should be used only from a sense of duty, and under the pressure of public necessity, for there can be no landmarks pointing out the boundaries in all cases. Committals for contempt of court by scandalising the court itself' have become obsolete in this country (England). Courts are satisfied to leave to public opinion attacks or comments derogatory or scandalous to them".

The Judge on behalf of the Privy Council amazingly went on to differentiate (with a "perhaps") in the case of "small colonies consisting principally of coloured populations" where "the enforcement in proper cases of committal for contempt of court for attacks on the court may by absolutely necessary to preserve in such a community the dignity of and respect for the court." But perhaps, in these days, when the social reproach of colour is largely removed and these colonies are attaining (however ill‑advisedly) the "dignity" of nationhood, the differentiation may have become somewhat anachronistic.

In the result, however, the appeal was upheld and costs were awarded against the Respondent in favour of the Appellant. (At a certain stage the Appellant had proceeded in forma pauperis.)

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY.

It was significant for Christianity that the invaders of Rome were Christians. The first conversion of Goths! by an Arlan Christian in the fourth century had been widely extended. For the Goths, Dogma was relatively unimportant in comparison with the organizing function of the Church; which the German chiefs seemed to appreciate ass much as did the Roman emperors. The invaders also exploited the intolerance of the rival sects by themselves showing greater tolerance. For example, in Africa, where the Donatists with their four hundred bishops had been persecuted under Honorius, the Vandals repaid the Donatists for their help .by giving them freedom of worship. It seems probable that the Manichaeans for the same reason at first welcomed the invaders; but soon the invaders found it politic to abate their tolerance. For a time Arianism prevailed; but late in the sixth century a new king adopted Trinitarianism.

By the end of the fifth century the immigrant heretic Franks in Gaul underwent involuntary mass conversion by the mere fiat of their ruler. The re-conquest of Italy by Belisarius and Narses further strengthened the Catholic cause; while the Lombards, who conquered the north and south, began to give up Arianism. Organized and endowed orthodox Christianity then prevailed, proceeding step by step with the dissolution of the empire, forming a strong cohesive force within the processes of political disintegration. This was rendered all the more effective by reason of the fact that a watchful eye was kept by the Church on all heretical attempts at ratiocination. Dogma now became supreme.

Jovian, an Italian monk, was condemned in Church Councils, flogged and banished to a desolate island for approving asceticism, urging a more rational morality and claiming that Mary c‑°ased to be a virgin on giving birth to Jesus. Vigilantius, a presbyter from Gaul, who opposed the growing worship of relics, had to bow before the outcry raised by Jerome; Pelagius and Coelestius, monks in Rome (400‑410) , who drew up a systematic argument against the doctrines of inherent human depravity, predestination and salvation by grace, were condemned in Council and had to flee from Rome.

Augustine, (354‑430) became the supreme oracle of the Church, passing on to the Middle Ages a lively body of, polemic theology. He, along with Origin and others, laid the foundations for the scholarship which followed.

In the fifth century Theodosius heretically taught that most of the Old Testament prophecies had no real relevance to Christ; while the chief new schisms of the period were those of Nestorius and the Monophysites. Nestorius was famous for his attacks on Appolinaris, bishop of Laodicaea (a strong anti Arian), but nevertheless himself a schismatic. Nestorius, anti‑schismatic, was himself condemned by a Council, convicted of blasphemy, classed with Judas, and banished for life. He had in the meantime incurred the wrath of the multitude for deprecating the deification of Mary. With the banishment of Nestorius, orthodox Christianity consolidated the worship of Mary along with the worship of God and Jesus. The Nestorians were driven to .Persia, where Orthodox Christians were being persecuted and massacred. It seemed likely that Christianity would disintegrate along with the empire; but it did not.

In the year 448 Eutyches, abbot of a monastery in Constantinople, sought to make an end of Nestorianism. He taught that Christ had an exclusively divine and non‑human nature. This was however assailed as a return to the Appolinarian heresy. Eutyches was cast out of the Church by a hostile Council but a subsequent Council acquitted and re-instated him, and caused his accuser 'to be flogged and banished; but a third Council at Chalcedon (451) again condemned Eutyches.

The wheel had turned full circle: At Nicaea (321) Arius had been routed and the dogma established that Christ was truly God, co‑equal and co‑eternal with the Father, separate but yet one; at Constantinople (381) Appollinaris had been routed and the dogma established that Christ was also truly man; at Ephesus (431) it was established that the two natures were

indivisibly one; and at Chalcedon (451) that while indivisibly one, the two natures were distinguishable. The four dogmas united in one became a fixed constituent of the Christian Creed. Modern orthodox scholarship as well as congregational thought appear to have lived down the emotional conflict on the now unintelligible subject of controversy of past ages.

The Eutycheans however persisted as a schismatic force; and in 482 Zeno, emperor of the East, sought a reconciliation by means of his "henoticon" (signifying "making one", or "unifying"); but the orthodox and the schematics would not be reconciled; and indeed on a distinction (the differences of which are unintelligible to us) many repudiated their nationality.

Later in the sixth century the Eutycheans under a new leader, Jacob Baradaeus, became known as Jacobites; and when in the seventh century the Arab Mohammedan movement broke upon Egypt where the Jacobites abounded, the latter in their consuming hostility to their orthodox brethren, welcomed the anti‑Christian enemy in Egypt as they had previously welcomed him in Persia.

Heraclius (610‑641) realised the danger and futility of driving out nationals for the sake of the abracadabra of dogma; and, like his predecessor, sought a reconciliation. In 630 he decreed that, while in Christ there were two natures, as held by some, there was only one will, as held by others. For a time this formula sufficed; but in a few years an orthodox "Zealot", Sophronius, patriarch of Jerusalem, re‑opened the debate and declared that the emperor's formula was a revival of the Eutychaen heresy. Heraclius (639) firmly forbade further debate on the question. Finally Constantine (681) accepted the doctrine that in Christ two wills were harmonized; and this was incorporated in the composite dogma later known (some centuries later than Athanasius) as the Atharasian Creed.

Like the Arians, the Monopnysites had divided into two warring sects, the dispute being as to the compatibility or the incompatibility of the body of Christ. The two parties again split into five; and the schism became racial, Egyptian opposing Greek. One hundred and seventy years later Justinian's general, Narses, at the bidding of the empress Theodora, destroyed a large part of Alexandria by fire to establish the doctrine of incompatibility.

Soon afterwards another imperial nominee, entering the city equipped for battle, eventually reached his episcopate through a s‑ea of blood. Doctrinal strife and civil war had .become synonymous and symptomatic, and so continued from the time of Constantine until the arrival of the Saracens.

Alas! The history of Christianity is "history" conformable to the laws of history, with its corrupting influence of power, its irritating effect of spiritual and intellectual arrogance and its denial of the relativity of truth.

By and large the history of Christianity is like the history of and "great nation" which has achieved power. Indeed some great Churchmen have also been great nationalists.

PREGNANT PERIODS OF JAMAICAN HISTORY

The Christian Churches in England were aroused to action by the atrocities committed in Jamaica against the Missionaries as an aftermath of the Slave revolt of 1831‑'32; and the tide of public feeling set strongly in favour of emancipation.

In May 1833 Mr. Stanley (later the Earl of Derry), Secretary of State for the Colonies, introduced in the House of Commons "An Act for the abolition of slavery throughout the British Colonies, for promoting the industry of the emancipated slaves, and for compensating the persons hitherto entitled to their services."

Stanley was by temperament exceedingly conservative in outlook. It was only in 1833 that the office of Secretary of State for the Colonies had been found for him; and it was mere accident that he happened to be head of the Colonial Office when events were ripe for emancipation, as it was mere accident that another Stanley was to be head of the Colonial Office when events became ripe for Jamaica's New Constitution of 1944. The former Stanley was also keen to be at the helm when the ship of state was riding on the wave of popular feeling. He happened to the fore during the period of parliamentary reform and Vest Indian emancipation from slavery. The Bill introduced by Stanley was in fact "neither flesh, fowl nor good red herring"; but the movement was started and the Apprenticeship Law eventuated.

It is claimed that the slave revolt in Demerara in 1824 had weakened somewhat the determination of the Missionaries in the matter of emancipation. On the contrary the Jamaican slave revolt of 1831‑'32 (largely by reason of the threats of the plantocracy to drive the Missionaries from Jamaica) appears to hate convinced the advocates of emancipation that the movement should no longer be delayed. The slaves of Jamaica had persistently fought for freedom; the Missionaries had within the law been their solace and hope during slavery.

In the year 1833 the British Parliament enacted the Emancipation Law providing for the abolition of slavery throughout the British possessions on August 1st 1834, so that however an apprenticeship period to cushion the shock should prevail for a period of not more than six years for praedials (farm hands) and not more than four years for domestics. Compensation of £20,000,000 was awarded to the planters, £6,000,000 of which from the Jamaican quota fell to their English merchant creditors.

Oppression under the Apprenticeship was so harsh, both in the matter of work and the price of manumission (for which the Law had made inadequate provision) that the probationary period was subsequently shortened and full emancipation came into effect on August 1, 1838.

Jamaican intransigence in the matter of slavery had been proverbial; but in response to the Governor's conciliatory address in 1833, the Jamaican Assembly declared that the people of Jamaica "have never advocated slavery in the abstract, but as connected with the right of property. Upon the principle of compensation they are ready to relinquish the system and will be proud to show that they have feelings as favourable to the improvement of the labouring population as their fellow subjects in the mother country. All they claim is to be fairly dealt with."

Mixed as the moral and business philosophy might appear to be, the promise of better things was belied during the period of the Apprenticeship and in succeeding generations; but in justice to the planters it should be borne in mind that for a long period they suffered from the dread twin economic diseases of inefficiency and Impecuniosity, aggravated '.by the vagaries of the world market. The un-reconciled claims of estate and plantation economy on the one hand and peasants' human freedoms on the other were to build up barriers to Jamaican progress which time long failed to wither and custom but served to strengthen. This is not to say that Jamaican history ran a course different from the ways of universal history. Here, as elsewhere, human labour was . a commodity to be bought in the cheapest market, and, when bought, the labourer was little more than a cost entry in the ledger. Nevertheless strong and remarkable bonds of affection persisted between master and man, but withal with a strong undercurrent of exploitation and domination on the one hand and resentment on the other hand.

The day of probationary emancipation was now drawing to a close. Every precaution was taken for the suppression of the anticipated revolt. The military force exceeded by one thousand men the largest force in the island during the French wars. A large fleet was stationed around the coast, ready to employ the new aids of steam for rapid movement from point to point.

The first day of August 1834 fell on a Friday; and there was to be a long week‑end holiday through Friday to Monday. Every chapel was open for worship, and nearly every church, except, curiously enough, in Kingston. Chapel and Church were filled. There was no suggestion of disorder. "No people on the face of the globe could have celebrated a day of such vast importance to themselves and their posterity with so much real devotion and so little uproarious hilarity", was the contemporary record. Sunday markets were abolished; and on succeeding Sundays Church and Chapel at last carne into their own.

ANOTHER MARATHON CORONER'S INQUEST.

The 1860s were a stormy period in Jamaican history, partly by reason of economic pressure, but partly also in minor measure because of the confrontation of two diverse personalities: Governor Eyre, who permitted official irregularities because committed by "constituted authority", and George William Gordon, the watchdog of the under‑privileged, who as a coloured man was a stickler for the proprieties.

Between them stood the relatively urbane Dr. Lewis Quier Bowerbank, described bay Gordon himself as "philanthropist", for no reason that I can gather other than that ,he showed active interest in the Kingston Public Hospital.

Dr. Bowerbank, personal friend of Governor Eyre, defended the latter in the Assembly as warmly as the Governor supported Bowerbank's activities anent the Hospital.

As Custos of Kingston, Dr. Bowerbank was chairman of the Board of Visitors of the Hospital, and made things very uncomfortable for the Hospital physicians Dr. Fiddes and Dr. Dunn and the surgeon Dr. Stern, actually making complaint to the Governor about Dr. Stern, who was however fully exonerated after investigation. In the result, the Governor's support of Bowerbank, forced the resignations of Drs. Dunn and Fiddes. In these circumstances, Dr. Bowerbank and his partner Dr. Anderson succeeded Drs. Dunn and Fiddes at the Hospital; and the functions of the Board of Visitors lapsed.

Shortly after the advent of Drs. Bowerbank and Anderson at the Hospital, a patient died under painful circumstances after an operation performed by Drs. Bowerbank and Anderson. At a lengthy Coroner's Inquest, a verdict was returned in general terms which in Governor Eyre's judgment did not require further proceedings.

In rapid succession, another death took place at the Hospital after an operation. In this case the Inquest lasted thirteen days; and the verdict was that "David Bell came to his death in the Public Hospital on the 26th day of July 1865 from two operations performed on him by the ordinary medical officers Dr. Izett William Anderson and Dr. Lewis Quier Bowerbank for diffused aneurism, while he was in reality suffering from circumscribed false aneurism, for which latter disease the treatment and amputation were quite unwarranted."

Prosecution was demanded by the public; but Governor Eyre set up an Inquiry by the Police Magistrate of Kingston and Colonel Fyffe of the Maroons; and there the matter ended.

As is generally known, there was a riot at Morant Bay in the following October; Gordon was arrested in Kingston by Governor Eyre and Custos Bowerbank personally, taken to Morant Bay, where martial law was in force, there tried by Court Martial and executed. After the execution of George William Gordon, one of Dr. Bowerbank's ,supporters wrote to the newspaper: "Up to a few days before the breaking out of the rebellion, the hospital question foamed one of the grand themes for seditious speeches and slanderous writings against the Governor and other authorities" ‑ which gives some indication of the high feeling aroused in Jamaica at the time by hospital matters.

Volume 3. Number 7. NOVEMBER 1958 .

CAUSERIES

The generous expressions which I have received on the "Comments" are not adequately reflected in paying subscriptions. To help cover expenses we need more and more regularly paying subscribers, and not only readers.

In the codfish controversy it does not appear to have been noted that the quality of the fish has improved recently, with the changed source of supply.

In the early days of our history, fish and other commodities were largely imported for the slaves. Thus Jamaica became a dregs market; and codfish of very poor quality was marked down for Jamaica. I know, because I have received presents of good salt fish, then quite unknown to the trade here.

Apropos of nothing, "codfish aristocracy" was a term in use up to the eighteen nineties to describe the "nouveaux" with social aspirations. The phrase was coined by Dr. Fiddes.

I remember: when the dreamers, James Gore and Glaister Baxter, foresaw the coming of roads to Pigeon Valley and Valdar and the prospect of enhanced values; when women's suffrage was disreputable and adult suffrage unthinkable; when Edison fired Henry Ford for wasting his time on the combustion engine and the fantasy of a motor car; when Judges of the Supreme Court sat on appeals from their own judgments and sometimes reversed them; when Communism was respectable and almost all intelligent thinkers were theoretical socialists; when Manly was a champion of civil liberties and opposed the brainwashing Censorship Bill; when society was less colourful than it is today, and human pedigree was more meticulously traced than the pedigree of the race horse; But I do not remember: when hypocrisy ever neglected to pay tribute to virtue, morals or religion.

FORMOSA.

In the early issues of these "Comments", we ventured the warning: "Watch that man Dulles. He is dangerous". When a comprehensive history of the past two decades comes to be written, it will probably be recorded that the most influentially menacing figure of the period has been John Foster Dulles. Coming into public life first as a pronounced pro Nazi and apologist for Hitler, his subsequent career developed a persistent policy of having a show‑down with Soviet Russia, taking the world on more than one occasion to the brink of war in the process. It will probably be found that he was largely responsible for involving America militarily in the civil conflict between North and South Korea and in the civil conflict between the Chinese over Formosa.

It was his needling of the Roosevelt administration for "worsening the prospect of world peace" by friendship with Britain, that resulted in his being appointed during a Democratic administration as Republican adviser to the American United Nations Delegation in the interests of a bi‑partisan foreign policy; and, later, against his will, Truman, for the same reason, was forced to give him assignments in the Far East. Perhaps however the anti‑Communist "bug" which bit them both, helped to bring them together.

In 1895 Japan took by force from China Formosa and the off ‑shore islands. In 1945 the anti‑Axis Allies took the islands from Japan and restored them to China. By the end of 1949 Chiang Kai‑Shek had been completely routed by the Communists after a struggle of twenty‑two years. They established the People's Republic as the de facto and de jure government of China, Chiang escaping with the remnant of his forces to Formosa.

By January 1950, many Governments, including Great Britain, had given recognition to the new Communist government. The state of American politics, with pro‑Communist charges being exchanged by way of political blackmail between the Republicans and Democrats, did not permit Truman to recognise the Communist Republic.

Up to mid‑June 1950 the Democratic government of the U.S. had firmly resisted all attempts of the Republican Party and the China Lobby to involve America in what Truman called the "civil conflict in China"; and had categorically stated that they would not give "military aid or advice" to Chiang on Formosa. General McArthur from his headquarters in Tokyo had been doing his best to involve America in a show‑down with the Communist world.

When in 1945 American and Soviet Russian forces accepted the surrender of Korea from Japan, a line was drawn at the thirty‑eighth parallel to avoid incidents between the two forces. North Korea went Communist. Syngman Rhee in the South tried for unification under his rule; and vice versa.

In the course of time American and Russian occupying forces were withdrawn from North and South Korea; but a state of hostility continued between the two parts of the peninsula, each side threatening unification by force; and armed camps were mutually threatening at the 38th parallel and carrying out mutual raids.

On June 14, 1950 Dulles left Washington for the Far East. He said he was going to Korea on the invitation of Syngman Rhee, the president of South Korea. He said he was going out to "wage peace". Immediately before leaving he dined with Rhee's Ambassador in Washington, who duly reported by cable that he had it from Dulles that America would not abandon South Korea. Dulles visited the South Korean troops in their trenches, and made a "pep" speech to them, saying: "The eyes of the free world are upon you. Compromise with Communism would be a road leading to disaster;" and assured them of the "readiness of the U.S.A. to give all necessary moral and material support". He wrote to Syngman Rhee: I attach great importance to the decisive part which may be played by your country in the great drama that is now unfolding".

(As far back as 1947, after the Moscow Conference, Dulles had urged the American government to go ahead with the treaty with Japan without seeking Russian agreement. By May 1950, he was publicly expressing the view that something more positive than the Cold War must be developed. As late as September 1958, he told reporters that Government stuck to the basic tenet that the Communist continued hold ors the mainland was not one of the facts of life.)

From Korea Dulles proceeded to McArthur's headquarters in Tokyo. After his talk with McArthur, the Associated Press reported that Dulles "predicted positive action by the United States to preserve peace in the Far East".

In the result "positive action" did not consist in warning the contestants that invasion by either party would bring intervention by the U.S. The meticulously careful investigation of the record by I. F. Stone, set out in his "Hidden History of the Korean War", leaves little doubt of the conclusion that Dulles and McArthur were planning to exploit some incident as a means of stampeding the U.S. into a show‑down with Soviet Russia and China; and succeeded in doing so. Ideas of "preventive war" permeated the American political atmosphere. The Chairman of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee had recently discussed the prevailing atmosphere with newspaper reporters; and said these sort of people expected an involving incident.

Dulles and McArthur were to spell out their ideas on the subject; while in August 1950 the Secretary of the Navy, "Matthews' in a public speech advocated preventive war; and the Commandant of the Air War College in a public interview advocated an attack on Russia. Truman was so alarmed that on September 1, 1950 in a radio broadcast he declared: "We do not believe in aggressive or preventive war".

As the Korean war began, McArthur endeavoured to involve Soviet Russia in responsibility; but no evidence was forthcoming. Then began a series of incidents whereby McArthur sought to embroil Soviet Russia and China in the Korean war. As the record shows he did finally embroil China by threatening their important waterworks at the Yalu River. Finally McArthur's in subordination became so pronounced that Truman took the heroic step of dismissing from his command this idol of the American public.

But the damage to Sino‑American relations had been done; and was irreversible. American politics became firmly affixed to Formosa.

North Korea had moved to the attack and crossed the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950. The incident was first reported at McArthur's headquarters as an attack by South Korea. Truman was reported as being interested but not alarmed. On the next day, after conferences with his Secretaries of State and Defence, he issued a statement but made no mention of military intervention by the United States, by themselves or under the auspices of the United Nations. In the Senate the Chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee said "the President does not want to take a course which will involve the people of the United States in armed aggression or in war". It was announced that the Republicans were "unanimous that the incident should not be used as a provocation for war".

That night however reporters were summoned to the White House to receive Truman's famous statement to be released the next day: "The attack on Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that Communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war". It pledged the United States to military intervention against any further expansion of Communist rule in the Pacific. It promised more military aid to Indo China and the Philippines. It ordered United States air and sea forces to give the South Korean Government troops cover and support; and it ordered the Seventh Fleet to prevent any attack on Formosa. Up to this point there was no commitment of American power to support Chiang's aspirations to "liberate" the mainland. Since then Dulles seems to indicate it to be a basic tenet of American Policy.

This overnight reversal of American policy forces one to the conclusion that Dulles and McArthur had at last succeeded in exploiting the incident for their own purposes and had persuaded the Administration to completely reverse its foreign policy on the ground that Communism (that is Soviet Russia) was on the march. Fortunately however Truman declared war not on ;Soviet Russia, but in general terms only an Communism.

And so The United States, dragging with her a token force from the member States of the 'United Nations, found herself involved in the civil conflict between North and South Korea; arid now once more finds :herself involved in the civil conflict between Chiang Kai‑Shek and Communist China. This time it may mean World War III. Formosa stemmed from Korea.

PREGNANT PERIODS IN JAMAICAN HISTORY.

The reports reaching England of the oppressive nature of the Apprenticeship induced two Quakers, Sturge and Harvey, with some associates to visit the islands on a fact finding mission. In the year 1837 they accordingly visited Antigua, Montserrat, Dominica St. Lucia, Barbados and Jamaica and published their report in book form in 1838 under the title: "The West Indies in 1837, being the journal of a visit to Antigua, Montserrat, Dominica, St. Lucia, Barbados and Jamaica undertaken fox the purpose of ascertaining the actual condition of the Negro populations of those islands".

They uncovered and reported appalling conditions of oppression in the islands, which confirmed the reports being sent to the Colonial Office by the Marquis of Sligo from Jamaica supported by the reports of the Stipendiary Magistrates.

In the result full emancipation was decided upon after a Committee of the House of Commons had inquired into, conditions in the colonies.

On 20th February, 1838, Lord Brougham moved in the House of Lords a series of resolutions one of them being that "it is expedient that the period of praedial apprenticeship in all the colonies should cease and determine on the first of August 1838". On this occasion only seven peers supported him. On March 29, a resolution to the same effects was moved in the House of Commons supported by petitions signed by more than a million people. Delegates from all parts of the country thronged the lobby of the House on the night fixed for the. debate. The Government opposed the motion, two hundred and fifteen voting for the resolution and two hundred and sixty nine against it. On May 22nd another resolution was introduced to the erect that Negro apprenticeship in the British colonies should at once cease and determine. The Government was taken by surprise and the motion was carried by a majority of three. A week later the Government secured rescission of the Motion.

In the meantime Queen Victoria succeeded William IV and Sir Lionel Smith was battling with the Jamaican Assembly on conditions under the Apprenticeship. On June 5, 1838, the Governor called the Assembly together to debate the agitation in England over the Apprenticeship, and in the hope that the Assembly would bring the term of Apprenticeship to an end, and obviate the necessity for compulsory legislation to that effect in England. In the event, Jamaica was the last of the islands to enact this measure. It was done, but under protest; and only after the compulsory measure had been enacted in England, and its proclamation suspended to give the colony an opportunity to pass its own act.

The Jamaican legislature showed up very badly in the proceedings; and the final protest was ill‑advised, petulant, abusive and utterly unworthy of serious‑minded legislators; but in extenuation it may be said that they felt the sacred rights of property to be at stake. But what was important was that at long last three hundred thousand human beings, representing three fourths of the population of the island, were freed from slavery, on the first day of August 1838.

In the year 1842 a select committee was set up by the House of Commons to enquire into the state of the different West India Colonies in reference to the existing relations between employers and labourers, the rate of wages, the supply of labour, the system and expense of cultivation and the general state of their rural and‑ agricultural economy. The minutes taken at the hearings and the report of the Committee are most informative. In their report the Committee confined themselves to a series of resolutions, which we briefly relate; but it is the evidence taken, which, making due allowance for the fact that a man's testimony largely reveals his own character, does give a picture of the conditions of industry and labour after emancipation.

It was the opinion of the Committee: That emancipation was productive "as regards the character and condition. of the Negro population, of the moat favourable and gratifying results"; that there had been rapid advance in civilizations and increased sense of the value of property and independent station; diminution in staple production; greatest effect in Jamaica, British Guiana and Trinidad; the cause being the difficulty of obtaining steady and continuous labour; diminished supply of labour generally because labourers are able to live in comfort and acquire wealth without labouring on estates for more than three or four days per week; caused by high wages and insufficiency of labour, and easy terms of purchase of land by labouring population; labourers allowed to occupy provision grounds at low or no rental; cheapness of land caused by excess of fertile land beyond the needs of the population; moderate and prudent changes in administration are recommended to the planters; promotion of immigration is suggested to create competition for employment; immigration supervision and control; relations between employers and labourers, to be regulated by legislation.

There was of course a good deal of evidence given in support of the conclusions of the Committee. On the other hand, the marked effect of good personal relations and fair play may be illustrated by the evidence given by Capt. Philip Browne, R.N. He was a proprietor of Morant Estate. St. Thomas, and came out in the year 1831 to try and restore conditions and remained until 1840. His human relations with slave and labourer alike were excellent; and he experienced relatively no difficulty in getting the work done, or, after emancipation, in securing adequate supply of labour.

The evidence is abundant that labour was obtainable when payment was regular and treatment reasonably decent.

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

It has been suggested that the very intellectual subjection of the Christian masses in Syria made them malleable material for Islam; and acted as a supplement to the sectarian hatreds which threw others into the arms of Islam, as well as into the arms of the superstitions which accorded authentic validity to the particular God of the particular conqueror, success in war being regarded as theological proof'. Be this as it may, when Moslem rule was established from Jerusalem to Carthage, the Christian Church dwindled to insignificance at its sources of origin; write, in Africa it disappeared; in Persia it continued, being tolerated by Islam by reason of its hostility to Christian Byzantium; but in many Asiatic States it succumbed entirely to Mohammedanism.

Comparatively little is known in detail of the military outburst of the first Mohammedan invaders, who in a few years destroyed the kingdom of Persia, tore Egypt, Syria and Africa from the East Roman Empire, and later conquered realms as far apart as India and Spain. The Christian narrators wrote at the beginning of the ninth century, some one hundred and thirty years or more after the conquest of Syria and Egypt. After the year 800 however we have more precise narratives.

This much we know of the earlier events: the first rush of Mohammed's followers during mid‑seventh century broke the Roman eastern frontier, which had withstood for six hundred years the most formidable enemies. Mohammedans claimed that their successes were due to the unique validity of their spiritual and religious pretensions. They were the chosen people of Allah, the one true God, of whom Mahomet was the unique prophet.

When the swift triumph of Islam cut off from Christendom the peoples among whom its creed had evolved, the creed was ruling in the far‑flung Roman empire: the Byzantiun State, Italy, Spain, Frankish Gaul, part of southern Germany, Saxon Britain and Ireland.

In the Moslem world Christianity existed on sufferance, and chiefly in heretical forms; but Christian Europe was more or less agreed on most of its official dogmas; while the masses carried on their pagan rites and festivals under the name of Christianity, translating Christian theory and tradition into terms of their own traditions or vice versa, with the particular variations as to sexual behaviour enjoined by Christianity. Through it all however the union of Church and State was supreme with all the sanctions of enforced centralization.

Monastic orders grew wealthy; and endowments and religious zeal increased with the temporal power of the Church, while the worldly and the unworldly operated to the political interests of benevolent rulers. The Church had become a political as well as a social function of the State. Perhaps when rulers became convinced that Christianity was to their interest, docile subjects enjoyed voluntary co‑option. Augustine claimed that 10,000 Angli were baptized in Kent on Christmas day 597. A little later Heraclius in the East baptized masses of Jews by force; and the same course was followed in Spain and Gaul. Among the Barbarians; force supervened, unlike the voluntary submissions in Britain. Imposition edicts and the royal support of the missionaries by the sword appear to have been the rule. In Britain there was a repetition of internecine religious strife which had agitated the Church within the empire and of mutual massacres and excommunications.

Charlemagne (c. 742‑814) has always remained in popular estimation as the great Christian protagonist against Islam. He was indeed acutely alive to the value of Church organization. In his wars with the Saxons, he decreed that those who rejected the gospel should be put to death ‑ his wars with them lasted thirty‑three years.

In the Scandinavian countries, the founding of Christianity was a life and death struggle lasting about two hundred and fifty years (820‑1075). Curiously enough, while active elsewhere in support of the Church, Charlemagne had vetoed its extension to Denmark, lest it be used against him as a hostile power.

Contrary to custom, the christianization of Russia was a bloodless process, achieved within three generations; and Russia remained Christian under the two and a half centuries of Mongol rule from 1223. But in Bohemia (870‑936), Poland (967), Hungary (997‑1038), Finland (12thCy) bloodshed accompanied the process of enforced conversion by conquest and decree.

It is a sad commentary on the propagation of religion (Christian and Islamic) that it was in each case accompanied by violence, associated with the power wielded by Church and State.

Throughout the foregoing period of the history of the rise and spread of Christianity, the records are filled with the sincere efforts of the followers of the cult to heal diseases, help distress and satisfy the cravings of the human spirit for contact with reality. A vast activity of charity and mercy animated the early Church; and has continued so to do throughout the ages: "to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to succour the diseased, to rescue the fallen. to visit the prisoners, to forgive the erring, to teach the ignorant and to minister to the salvation of the soul. A mighty power impelled men to deny themselves in the service of others; and to find in this service their own true life".

Among the early fathers and continuously thereafter there were men of great probity, spirituality and unselfishness, as well as great administrators and men of great ability and literary talent.

The story of the Papacy must now be told.

Volume 3. Number 8. December 1958

CAUSERIES

Perhaps one is trop a cheval on a pet hobby; that the recreational urge is one of the strongest factors in human conduct. Perhaps this conviction is one's particular form of vanity; for most people agree on the contrary that vanity is a greater compelling factor in human behaviour.

Vanity seems to proceed from some inferiority chink in one's armour; and assails both the intellectual and the uneducated, the master and the slave. Every employer should bear this in mind; and remember that a word of praise is more effective than an overweight of blame.

M. G. Smith, the anthropologist (Social and Economic Research U.C.W.I.) in a penetrating article on the British West Indies in the 1820s calls attention to "status" even among slaves. Students of English history know the part status played in England for countless generations. The hierarchy of status is a manifestation of vanity.

Often vanity acts as an inhibitory force; sometimes however it spurs mediocrity to achievement. Assailing both the intellectual and the uneducated, it assails also both the ornate and the insignificant. World movements have been stimulated or impeded by the personal vanity of one or more people of influence.

There are people with whom one is unable to make any progress even on an admittedly important plan unless one gets them to believe that one thinks that they think that one thinks that they originated the plan.

At the turn of the twentieth century there were two highly placed government officials in Jamaica to whom the only way of approach was to enlist or pretend to enlist their help.

Vanity does not exclude the recognition of one's own shortcomings; but does manifest a desire to conceal them, or to avoid being confronted with them.

I have never quite made up my mind whether these "Comments" spring from the recreational urge or from vanity.

PREGNANT PERIODS IN JAMAICAN HISTORY

Economically, the period following on emancipation and continuing through to the riot at Morant Bay in October 1865 forms a very dark and depressing period in Jamaican history. The attempts of the emancipated slaves and their Missionary leaders to readjust their society and economy were impeded by both the lack of understanding and impecuniosity of potential employers. Some attempt will now be made to trace conditions during this very difficult period; but it is relevant to consider conditions prevailing shortly before emancipation.

In 1837 there were 183 elementary day schools with nearly 13,000 children on the register, 139 Sunday schools, 95 evening schools and 124 private schools. From 1837 to 1841, in addition to grants from religious bodies in England, a grant of £30,000 was made annually by Great Britain to Jamaica for education. In 1842 the grant was reduced to £6000, and, diminishing annually, finally ceased in 1846. In the same year Britain admitted slave grown sugar on equal terms with Jamaican sugar; and the ruling class was so sorry for itself that it made no provision to replace the former British grant for education. In 1865 there were only 893 schools accommodating 26,167 children. The ecclesiastical grant for the established church was said to be £45,000 per annum, while the amount spent on education was only £3,000, £500 of which was paid to the inspector of schools. Between 1838 and 1865 there was no more controversial social question in Jamaica than the propriety of education for the children of peasant and labourer. George William Gordon was a lone voice pressing for dis-endowment of the "established" Church.

Of the Negro villages in time of slavery distance lent enchantment to the view, set as they were amid groves of fruit trees. The near view gave disillusionment. Thousands of the homes consisted of one room serving the whole family. Marriage was almost unknown. Women concubines cooked the food, waited on the men and helped in the cultivation and sale of crops. Within twenty years the efforts of the missionaries were rewarded in improved social habits, particularly in the new villages established after emancipation.

In preparation for emancipation the village of Sligo Ville was commenced in 1835. By 1843 every allotment had been sold, and the village was prosperous. In 1843 Clarkson Town was already of considerable extent. At that time it was estimated that the number of villages established since emancipation numbered about two hundred and the lands purchased about 100,000 acres. The heads of families purchasing numbered 10,000 and the number of cottages erected 3000, the amount paid for land £70,000 and the value of houses erected £100,000, all within four or five years.

Full credit should be given to the missionaries. Now the dress of the country folk kept pace with economic betterment; and regard for its value was evidenced by the quaint custom, which continued up to the time of motor conveyance; "dress clothes" and shoes and stockings carried in a basket on the head near to the social centre (church or village), and there donned, to be carefully replaced in the basket after the occasion, then taken home and cleaned and carefully put away against the needs of the next ceremonial occasion.

The ideas of the peasantry on the subject of marriage also underwent marked change. In 1840 a law was passed legalizing the celebration of marriage by missionaries of all denominations, and the ceremony became a matter of very frequent occurrence, the prospective husband providing the bride's wedding dress. Between 1841 and 1843 nearly 15,000 marriages were annually celebrated.

Courtesy, always a feature of primitive peoples, was a marked feature of the countryside. The. humblest of the peasantry never met without exchanging salutations and inquiries after the health of the family; and omission to say "howdye" in passing was regarded as a breach of good manners. Gratitude for favours received, respect for old age, love of offspring, generous compassion for the distressed, ardent and disinterested friendship, have, even .by prejudiced writers 'been acknowledged as redeeming features of the negro's character. These qualities ware becoming increasingly manifest. In a despatch in 1832 Governor Metcalfe remarked: "The peasantry sent their children to school and paid for their schooling. They attended and subscribed for their churches. They were generally well‑ordered and free from crime."

We know that missionary bodies financed land settlement in the early days after emancipation and in preparation for emancipation; but necessity also prevailed on landowners to part with their land, in spite of the prevailing belief that the sale of land for negro use was a betrayal of one's class, seeing that possession of land would disturb the labour market.

Joseph Sturge who had visited the island in 1837, helped the Baptist Minister John Clark to establish settlements in the St. Ann mountains. In 1852 Clark, at the request of Sturge, reported on land settlement. He reported the constant disputes between planter and emancipated negro on the matter of wages and house rent, which made it urgently necessary for land to be placed at the disposal of the people. He first bought 120 acres near Brown's Town at a cost (including cost of title) of £700. Nearly one hundred building lots and the same number of provision grounds were established. The house which originally ,stood on the property was converted into a schoolroom; and a chapel was subsequently built. This was the settlement called Birmingham in honour of Sturge. In 1850 it had a population of five hundred and forty. The next property purchased, called Clarksonville, cost £1500 and comprised six hundred acres, and provided for about one hundred families. Next came Wilberforce. Then one hundred acres in standing wood was purchased for £300 and laid out

at the urgent request of people who lived far away from the other settlements. A large picturesque village called Stepney was built containing a commodious schoolhouse and a temporary place of worship.

A planter in the neighborhood asked Clark to help him dispose of part of his property. Eighty families were settled on this. It was called Buxton. It was now no longer necessary for Clark to involve himself in financial responsibility. Several proprietors offered land for sale in small lots at from £& to £12 per acre; and the number of independent villages in the district increased to twenty or more; fifteen or sixteen hundred families, or about three‑fourths of the people of the district, were settled on their own lands.

Clark reports that there were 1800 members of Baptist churches; and also that the system of forming independent villages had been extensively carried out in all parts of the island, at first by the missionaries and later by the people themselves, until at least two‑thirds of the whole population possessed their own little holdings.

In most of the ,settlements there was a "classroom", where many of the people attended prayers every morning before going to work and again in the evening after work. Great care was taken in securing title to land; and, if a holding was assessed at £6 or more, in assuring voting rights for the freeholder. But partly through their being disfranchised on various pretexts, and partly from their lack of understanding, or their failure to record their titles, or to pay the voting tax imposed on the small landowner, many failed to secure the rights of the franchise.

Clark reported the settlements as going well and the people as industrious, thoughtful, frugal and socially ambitious. Ground provisions and other annual crops were grown for subsistence and sale; and a large quantity of "new sugar" was being made for sale and use. Fourteen years after emancipation one half of the export quantity of coffee was believed to be the produce of these settlements and a large portion of the pimento. It was from the "small settler" that Captain Baker in the 1200s got his early supplies of Bananas for export to America.

In addition to John Clark's report, we have the valuable "Missionary Reminiscences" of the first Presbyterian missionary, Mr. Blyth, the founder of Hampden Church, Trelawny. He noted the reciprocal advantages of a labouring population of small ; ,attlers in proximity to the estates. He claimed that the negro had been raised from a state of deepest degradation to one of civilization and comparative comfort and independence. Generally he found that the plan of negroes cultivating grounds for the support of their families had been a great blessing to the country. He warned that the most watchful and fostering care of those who helped to deliver them from slavery was necessary, and that the laws emanating from the Colonial Office and the local legislature needed careful watching, lest the rights and privileges of the negroes as British subjects be curtailed. They should, he added, be aided to maintain their religious and educational institutions. He emphasised the word "aided"; for he advised that their own energies and resources should continue to be drawn out and applied to these objects; but he pointed out that at the time (1852) reduction of wages, frequent lack of employment, the ravages of cholera and smallpox, as well as heavy taxation (the ad-valorem import duty which provided most of the island's revenue pressed heavily on them, not to mention discriminatory taxation on their particular form of livestock) were preventing them from contributing morn than one‑third of the amount they once cheerfully gave toward building chapels and schoolhouses and supporting their pastors and teachers.

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

The idea that by self‑mortification men attain intercessory power, which is found in ancient religions, inevitably invaded early Christianity, and, imposed at first to some extent, became more coercive as control passed out of Jewish hands. It was not unusual therefore for a presbyter of the second century to gain repute for sanctity by adopting celibacy. There were sincere (and sometimes extreme) cases like that of Origen. It was inevitable also that the burden which was undertaken sometimes proved greater than could be borne; but this thought weighed lightly with the people who did not fail to denounce priestly lapses. As often before and since, an artificial ethic created an artificial crime. But nature asserted her rights; and in the second century priestly concubinage was ill‑concealed; and sometimes even asserted on the ground of spiritual union. Nevertheless denunciation by Bishop and Council followed; and it is open to question whether the discipline of the Western Church did not perforce create underground disorder.

In the Roman period there was no machinery for enforcing celibacy. Councils varied in their stringency; and practice diverged from preaching; while the bishopric of Rome had only a ceremonial primacy over the provinces.

In the second century, Victor, Bishop of Rome, excommunicated the Easterns over the practice of the observance of Easter; but his authority was defied; and for some centuries it was not again asserted to any similar extent. In the third century, Bishop Cyprian of Carthage, claimed merely primacy without superior authority for the chief .bishoprics, and for Rome over the rest. This held good as late as the fourth and fifth centuries. By that time the bishop alone had the right to appoint to Church offices.

When in the third century one party in the Church at Rome ,sought to appoint Novatian as its separate bishop, led by Cyprian, the bishops in the provinces secured the principle that no town should have more than one bishop. The bishops were gradually gathering power in and out of Synod.

The growth of Islam in the East and of barbarism in the West promoted the growth of the Roman, Papacy as the supreme ecclesiastical power in Latin‑ Christendom. The movement had begun in the second century; but in the third century we find Cyprian of Carthage insisting on the independence of his Church, while admitting the ceremonial Papacy of Rome. In the fourth century, Damascus tried to induce the Eastern bishops to go to Rome for the settlement of disputes; but the Pastern Council sternly rebuked him. While the old empire subsisted, neither the emperor nor the patriarch at Constantinople would concede any supreme authority to the bishop of Rome; and in 381, Theodosius constituted the patriarch of Constantinople the equal of the Bishop of Rome. And while the Roman bishop was pushing his claims to primacy, the see of Constantinople with the emperor's connivance was taking province after province from the Roman jurisdiction; while the bishop of Jerusalem was claiming primacy also.

Leo I (440‑61) did much toward the event, but it was under Gregory I (590‑804) that the Roman See begins clearly to appear as the head of the Western Churches, and the Church itself to establish its spiritual reign on earth.

The Patriarch of Constantinople had assumed the title of Oecumenical or Universal, and Gregory had pronounced the claim blasphemous; but a few years later he secured his own supremacy, but had to fight hard for supremacy in Britain, Gaul and Spain.

In the eighth century the emperors quarreled with the Papacy; and the majority of the Popes (730‑?5) called in the help of the Franks. In 754 Pepin presented to the Pope the sovereignty of the exarchate receiving favours in return. Finally fn 774 Charlemange conquered the Lombards; and fn 800 the "Holy Roman Empire" was established with the Pope as the spiritual colleague of the emperor. As Voltaire was somewhat sardonically to remark, it was "neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire"

Hitherto the Bishop of Rome had been popularly elected like other bishops, and like them also was subject to acceptance by the emperor; but after Pope Zacharias (741‑ 52) the eastern emperor was ignored. Charlemange however asserted his power over the Church as Constantine had done. The relations between emperor and pope depended, as far as the relative assertion of power was concerned, upon the personal character of each. The Pope, for example, asserted power in relation to Charlemange's son, Louis, in a measure never attempted against Charlemange; while in 875 Pope John VIII even claimed the right to choose the emperor. In the meantime the Pope had not yet secured exclusive prestige within the Church itself. In 824 a Council of Frankish bishops in Paris actually denounced as absurd decrees of the Pope enjoining the worship of images.

In the ninth century the Frankish bishops produced a collection of alleged ancient and authentic decretals dealing with the local independence of bishops and their right of appeal to Rome. Pope Nicholas I (858‑67) adopted these and used them in support of his central authority; but their authenticity is seriously questioned by scholars. The progress of the Papacy was however somewhat hampered by internal disorders. From John VIII to Leo IX (1003 ‑ 108) six Popes were deposed, two murdered and one mutilated, the Papal office being at the disposal of factions of the Italian nobility. For a time the counts of Tuscany succeeded in making the office hereditary in their family.

The tenth century had to reckon with the general tradition based on the Apocalypse that the world would come to an end in the year 1000 and with the licentiousness that often attends periods of actual or impending disaster. The elections to the Papacy had become so scandalous and expensive that the clergy themselves conceded the right of appointment to Henry III of France in 1047.

Now enters on the scene one of the most remarkable of the clericals of the eleventh century, the monk Hildebrand, later to become Pope as Gregory VII. As secretary of Pope Nicholas II, he advised the latter to decree (1059) that the election of all bishops should lie with the local "chapters" and the pope; but that the pope should in future be elected by the seven cardinal bishops of the Roman district, the choice first to be assented to by the cardinal priests and deacons of the Roman Churches then by the laity and then to be ratified by the emperor.

By the time he became Pope however (1073), Hildebrand had become fanatically attached to the ancient decretals, had embarked on a programme of drastic reforms and claimed supreme authority as Pope including the right to depose kings. The struggle between Henry IV and Gregory VII brought slaughter and misery on both Italy and Germany; but out of it the papacy emerged with an accession of strength. In the course of the struggle the Pope reduced Henry to an historic act of self abasement (1077) at Canossa. Gregory VII as Pope and Hildebrand previously as Monk made such an impression on contemporary history that some greater details on the life and activities of this remarkable man appear to be in order in even a grief sketch of the history of the papacy; and these will accordingly be taken up in our next issue.

CIVIL LIBERTIES IN THE U.S.A.

The American "Bill of Rights" expressly builds into the Constitution guarantees of civil liberties which remain inviolable and unalterable except by amendment of the Constitution. An amendment of the Constitution has to be proposed by two‑thirds of the members of both houses of Congress but cannot go into effect until ratified by the legislatures of three‑fourths of the States. The Constitution remains supreme over the legislature; and the Constitution is authoritatively interpreted by the Supreme Court. A law passed by the legislature may therefore be null and void if interpreted by the Supreme Court as ultra vires (or beyond the powers of) Congress.

Nevertheless repressive laws violative of the civil liberties enshrined in the Constitution have been passed by Congress and by‑passed by the Supreme Court. This is fully in accordance with the law of history: that public opinion (often carefully groomed by politicians or government or newspapers) reacts upon the judiciary and defeats the Constitution.

In this issue we deal with the atrocious Smith Act.

The Smith Act, passed in 1940, was the first Federal peace time sedition law enacted since the "infamous Alien Act of 1798" (our quotation is from President Truman's veto of the McCarran‑Walter Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952) . The clauses of the Smith Act which constitute flagrant violations of the "First Amendment" of the Constitution were smuggled through Congress as a small and inconspicuous part of a lengthy bill aimed at aliens; and few Americans realised that a concealed violation of the Constitution was being enacted denying to American citizens civil liberties expressly enshrined in the Constitution.

These clauses make it a crime with penalties of $10,000 in fines and ten years in prison "to knowingly and willfully advocate, abet, advise or teach the duty, necessity, desirability or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the U.S. by force or violence" or "to organize or help to organize any society, group or assembly of persons, who teach, advocate or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any government in the U.S. by force or violence; or to be or become a member of, or affiliate with, any such society, group or persons, knowing the purpose thereof." They also provide that "it shall be unlawful for any person to attempt to commit, or to conspire to commit, any of the acts prohibited by the provisions of this title."

These provisions violate the First Amendment, by penalizing mere advocacy of political ideas; and run counter to the American tradition of free speech.

In the summer of 1948 the Truman administration in preparation for the elections and to offset Republican charges of "softness towards Communism" indicted twelve top leaders of the Communist Party under the Smith Act. The indictment charged that they "conspired" to put into effect . . . Judge Medina found eleven of the accused guilty (one of them was not brought to trial by reason of ill‑health) and sentenced ten of them to five years and ones to three years imprisonment and also sent their several Counsel to gaol for contempt of Court in the course of the defence.

Actually the accused were never charged with any overt act but merely with advocating Marxist doctrines generally; and no evidence was given of any plan or incitement to overthrow the government by force or otherwise.

A majority of the Supreme Court declared the Smith Act constitutional on a palpably false extension of the famous Judge Holmes's questionable dictum of a "clear and present danger". Judges Black and Douglas gave dissenting judgments. Extracts from these dissenting judgments will give some idea of the fantastic nature of the charge and conviction.

Volume 3. Number 9. January 1959

CAUSERIES

So W. A. Domingo's warning on Federation of July 1956 has come home to roost. He said: "It might be possible even at this late date for some of the legislators who accepted the idea without appearing to have given it any critical study . . . to stop and take that sober second thought . . . " What would a plebiscite in Jamaica today reveal?

To the unsophisticated it may appear shocking that an Opposition which did not oppose (indeed which ratified) Federation, when opposition a n d non‑ratification might have been seemly and opportune, should now opportunistically seek kudos and political profit out of a threat of secession.

Quite apart from the merits and demerits of Federation, Sir Grantley Adams might with profit to himself and Federation have studied the political history of the U.S.A. If those who drafted the American Constitution had prematurely thrown their weight around, the U.S.A. Federation might well have foundered before the first ten Amendments and ratification; for the unit States were exceedingly jealous on the score of State sovereignty; and permitted only in the course of time and under the stress of real or imaginary necessity, the invasion of State rights and the Constitution & Bill of Rights by Federal authority.

"Police powers" in inter‑state commerce, "due process", "equal protection" in law, and civil liberties were all the subject of carefully worded provisions; which gave way one by one to ad hoc legislation, some of it palpably ultra vires the Constitution.

The cynic might well conclude that Federation is a form of antecedent compulsion to future compacts which would never otherwise have been voluntarily conceded.

PREGNANT PERIODS OF JAMAICAN HISTORY

Records of the social and economic conditions surrounding plantation economy in Jamaica in the eighteen twenties are ample. The anti‑slavery campaign was in full swing; and presentation of the facts, tinged with the commentator's special bias, or particular experiences, illuminates the period with much material for historical research and judgment.

In 1818 the authoritative survey set down the area of the island at 2,724,262 acres, of which 639,000 were in sugar estates or plantations, 280,000 acres in breeding pens or farms and 181,000 acres in coffee, pimento, ginger &c. No comprehensive account was ever taken of the farming of the slaves, by whom was produced the surplus ground and other provisions which supplied the whole island with staple food known as bread-kind. At this period the slave population was estimated at 345,252, the white population being computed at 35,000, and there being a large number of free "persons of colour".

The various local agricultural products exhibited no marked difference in kind to present day products; but some variation in volume and use. For, example, the south side of the island relied to a great extent on the guinea corn, a sorghum, which produced a kind of flour‑meal for the slaves.

Among the fauna, the wild hog had retired to the remote recesses of the woods, while the cane‑piece rat committed immense ravages in the sugar cane and corn fields. It was estimated that the cane‑piece rat destroyed regularly one‑fourth of the annual sugar crop at its source in the fields. Thirty thousand were said to have been destroyed on one plantation in a year.

The quail, then a common bird in Jamaica, has since, along with other ground‑nesting birds, been exterminated by a later introduction, the mongoose, which was imported to keep down the pest of the cane field rats. Yellow, black and brown snakes were also common in Jamaica during the period. They have been exterminated by the mongoose.

Better class cattle was imported occasionally from England, and poorer quality breeds from Cuba. The price of beef underwent extreme fluctuations ranging between 71/2d. and 1/8d per lb. The pen-keepers and butchers often combined to keep up the price, as the magistrates could regulate the price of bread but not of beef.

Chemical fertilizer being entirely unknown, planters made great use of animal manure, compost heaps, ashes and marl. Each cane hole received its modicum of animal manure, and before a field was planted it was subjected to a process of "penning" 2000 head of cattle per acre being successively folded on the land to be planted. On many absentee‑owned plantations however the overseers took up new lands for cultivation rather than incur the expense of manuring the already cultivated lands.

Guinea grass had been in the island for over a century; and was then usually planted in the rugged outlying lands. The introduction of guinea grass into Jamaica was fortuitous. A Chief Justice received from Africa a pair of canaries with bird seed for their sustenance. When the cage was cleaned the seed germinated; and the domestic cow was seen to relish the resulting grass. Guinea grass had arrived in Jamaica. (A later generation of Jamaicans about twenty five years ago witnessed the introduction of the now ubiquitous Seymour grass, the seed clinging to the straw in a packing case received at Up Park Camp, St. Andrew.)

Para or Scot's Grass was also a staple source of fodder in well‑watered districts. At the Ferry a man was reputed to be making £120 per annum. out of an acre of Scot's grass. The botanists of the day were urging the importation and development of fodder grasses.

The "plantain walk" was an established feature of subsistence economy, along with the cultivation of yam and coco. The seeded breadfruit (probably our breadnut) had been introduced into the West Indies by the French as far back as 1782; but it was not until 1792 that Capt. Bligh succeeded in introducing the breadfruit. In his honour, the akee, later introduced from Africa, was called by the botanists blighia sapida. It was often noted that planters in general did not pay sufficient attention to ,subsistence crops; and that therefore undue expenditure had to be incurred in the importation of American provisions. It is interesting to note that during this period there was an active export trade in the dried okro seed, highly esteemed by Jamaicans for alleged curative properties in tuberculosis, but more reliably used for thickening in soups and gravy.

Retail dealers throve on the extensive system of credit which prevailed in their dealings. Their credit price was arrived at by multiplying the cost price by three, thus providing a reserve for bad debts and a margin of profit. Perhaps the bad debts grew more largely than anticipated; for in later years it was not unusual to see the legend scrawled on the country shop: "Poor trust is dead. What killed him? Bad Pay. To trust is to bust; to bust is hell. No trust, no bust, no hell."

The coinage deficiency was a continual source of anxiety. The chief coins were Spanish, with a few Portuguese gold coins; but there were no banks; and the supply of coin in circulation was quite inadequate for the needs of commerce. At an earlier period the "clipping" of coins was the subject of much complaint; and, in the prevailing jealousy of economic competition, was naturally blamed on the successful Jewish trader, who was for many years to serve peasant and slave (as the Chinese trader was to serve the peasant at a later date) by tradinging his products for his needs. Ninety days bills on London carried a premium of twenty per cent.

The prevailing taxes were a poll tax on each slave of 6/8d and on livestock of 1/8d per head; land tax of 3d per acre, quit rent of 1/2d per acre, a wheel tax of 20/‑ (from which agricultural conveyances were exempt), and a house tax of twelve per cent on annual rental value. There were also parochial taxes on slaves and livestock, a road tax for keeping the highways in repair, a transient importer's tax of a small percentage on the invoice, and an import tax on wines, tobacco, refined sugar, coffee, flour, cattle &c. The annual public revenue amounted to about £280,000.

The government of Jamaica came next to that of Ireland in lucrativeness, the Governor's fees and emoluments being rated at £10,000 per annum, derived largely from Court fees, Customs seizures, sale. of militia commissions and the escheat of lands. His court fees were earned 'by virtue of his office as Chancellor and Judge of the Court of Errors and Ordinary. Next to that of the Governor's the three most lucrative offices (and at one period more lucrative even than that of Governor) were those of Island Secretary, Provost‑Marshall‑General and Clerk of the Supreme Court. They were held by persons resident in England under Patents from the Crown The holders of the Patents farmed them out to the highest bidder. (Students of English history may remember how the younger Pitt defended sinecures on the ground that they were legally real property and their sanctity should be preserved).

The Island Secretary was Registrar General, while the provost marshall general was island high sheriff, with deputies in the various parishes. It may be remembered that the office of Postmaster General of Jamaica was held by the Postmaster General of England; and that in the eighteen fifties the Jamaican legislature indignantly refused to have the island take it over, an the ground that it was thrown back on the island only when it ceased to be lucrative. The Postmaster General of England met the occasion by simply demitting office.

Rectors of the established Church also enjoyed lucrative posts. They had a modest substantive salary, increased by fees by £1600 to £3000 per annum. Many of the fees were voluntary as to amount; except in so far as compelled by custom or noblesse oblige. £16 might be the usual voluntary fee for the well‑to‑do on a marriage, baptism or funeral; but a wealthy man would recognise his social obligations to a more generous degree. In 1823 there were in Kingston a Roman Catholic chapel, several meeting houses belonging to Methodists, Moravians, Anabaptists &c., and a Jewish Synagogue. A Presbyterian Church lead been established a few years earlier, meeting some opposition to a grant‑in‑aid out of public moneys on the ground that the Scotch Church was not recognised by the Constitution.

The Militia was obligatory for males between sixteen and sixty, involving drill once a month and field inspection once a quarter.

There was a weekly postal service between Kingston and other parts of the country, but Spanish Town was more frequently served. The mails were conveyed on mule back by an accompanying slave also mounted on mule back. There were forty post offices throughout the island with a central general past office. The rate of postage depended upon distance and varied from 72 to 1/3d per letter. All foreign mail to Jamaica passed through England. Fast sailing ships brought the "packet" to Jamaica once per month. Arrival before the twentieth of the month entitled the master of the ship to a bonus of one hundred guineas.

At this period, the free persons of colour were "feeling their feathers" and preparing to secure emancipation from their remaining political disabilities. As the reactionary annalist Bridges pro‑ noted: "That, portion of the population..

plainly perceived the influence which it must shortly obtain in an island which in the next generation will ,surely be their own."

THE RISE AND SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

The interweaving stories of Henry IV and of Pope Gregory VII (as well as the stories of some other popes who will be mentioned in some detail) vividly illustrate the power‑politics history of the day and the close connection and rivalry between the Church and State, which had been seized upon by the older Roman emperors for benefits of State and had been exploited by the Church in the extension of its powers for the benefit of clergy. The alliance was often to exhibit connivance and conflict within the "Holy Roman Empire" within which gyrated the persons of emperor or king or duke and pope, sometimes pulling together, sometimes pulling apart Church and State and people.

Henry, on his father's death, inherited the kingdoms of Germany, Italy and Burgundy. He being a minor, the territories were governed in his name by his mother; but it was symptomatic of the political power of the Church that she was compelled to hand over control to the Archbishops of Cologne and Bremen. In March 1065, Henry, at the age of fifteen, was declared of age, and assumed control.

By 1061, Hildebrand, only an archdeacon, was already playing an important part in affairs of Church and State; and had much to do with the transference of papal elections to the College of Cardinals. The popular faith in his qualifications were such, that, although the circumstances of his election as Pope invited question in 1073, no attempt was then made to set up a rival Pope; and this became unthinkable when his rule as Gregory VII had ripened by custom and efficient administration.

At first Gregory remained neutral in Henry's territorial disputes, although Henry had sought to prevent Gregory's journey to Germany; but the Saxon revolt forced him to come to terms with the Pope; and, as a matter of policy, he did penance at Nuremberg in the presence of the legates ostensibly to expiate his intimacy with the members of his Council who had been banned by Gregory. He then took an oath of obedience and promised his support in the work of reforming the Church, to which Gregory was fanatically committed.

As soon however as Henry had subdued the Saxons, he renewed his opposition to Gregory; and on three occasions, and at Henry's instigation, Gregory was declared deposed and an anti‑Pope, Clement III, elected in his place.

In 1081, Henry, finding support in Lombardy, placed Gregory's faithful .friend, Matilda, Marchioness of Tuscany, under a ban, took the Lombard Crown at Pavia, and secured Clement's recognition by the ecclesiastical Council. In 1082 he took Rome, and concluded a treaty with the Romans, in which it was agreed that the quarrel between Henry and Gregory would be decided by the Synod, the Romans secretly agreeing with Henry to induce Gregory to crown him, or failing that to choose another Pope. In 1084 Gregory was accordingly declared deposed and Clement was recognised as Pope by the Romans, and he crowned Henry as emperor. Henry then attacked the fortresses that were still in Gregory's hands; but the advance of an enemy compelled his return to Germany.

In the disputes between Henry and his son, Conrad, Gregory's papal party supported Conrad and had him crowned king of Italy in 1093. In 1105 Henry was taken prisoner by his son and was forced to abdicate the throne of Germany and died the next year.

As far back as 1076 Gregory's severe reprimands had infuriated Henry and his court; and it was at that time that a Council of Bishops renounced their allegiance to Gregory and the Romans chose a new Pope. When it was announced at the Synod that Gregory was deposed it was due only to the restraining influence of Gregory that the envoy was not at once murdered in the Synod hall. On the following day however Gregory excommunicated the German king.

This made a profound impression both in Germany and Italy; and in Germany in particular feeling set in strongly in favour of Gregory; and it was only the failure to find a successor that saved Henry's crown. ,But it was settled that if within a year the ban of excommunication was not lifted, the throne should then be considered vacant. It was in these circumstances that Henry went to Italy and abased himself in penance before Gregory , at Canossa. ("Canossa" has passed into history as a synonym of the humiliation of the head of State). Reconciliation was effected only after prolonged negotiation and pledges from the king. But while Henry regarded the sentence deposing him as repealed with that of the ban of excommunication, Gregory merely reserved his decision on the question.

It is obvious that the rebellious German nobles exploited religious questions for political ends. They were little concerned with the ecclesiastically burning questions of investiture, still less with simony and the celibacy of the clergy, all of which meant so much to Gregory in the process of Church discipline and reform. In the result the king refused to accept deposition; and in 1081 opened hostilities against Gregory.

Gregory had now fallen on evil days. He lived to see thirteen cardinals desert him (him, who had done so much to enhance their prestige and power), Rome surrendered to a German king, Clement enthroned in his place; while ha himself had to flee from Rome.

Gregory had tried to establish suzerainty for the Bee of St. Peter at Rome, including the domains of Corsica, Sardinia, Spain and Hungary; and had threatened Philip I of France with summary measures, over the abuses of simony.

For Gregory, the Church as a divine institution, had teen entrusted with the task of embracing all mankind in a single society ruled by divine law, with the Pope as God's vice‑regent on earth. While. he acknowledged the co‑existence of Church and State as a divine ordinance, he maintained the superiority of the Church; and claimed the right of excommunicating and deposing incapable or unworthy monarchs, and of confirming the choice of their successors. He denied the right of investiture to the laity; regulated the canonical appointment to bishoprics; and insisted on all important disputes being referred to Rome. His battle for papal omnipotence is involved in his championship of compulsory celibacy among the clergy and his attacks on the evils of simony.

It was he who formulated the ideal of the papacy as a structure embracing all peoples; and he took the first step towards the codification of ecclesiastical law and the definite ratification of the apostolic Chair as cornerstones of the foundations of the Church. It was due to his insistence that the celibacy of the clergy became customary in Catholic Christianity, although inevitably the Church had to pass through a period of clerical concubinage. It was inevitable also that with the strict insistence by reformers like Gregory, throughout the Middle Ages there were complaints against bishops on the score of avarice, luxury and worldliness; and even in the matter of concubinage, bishops, popes and presbyters were not free from worldly indulgence; while hypocrisy paid the usual tribute to ordained virtue.

FREEDOMS OF THE PRESS -GLEANER PROFILE

With the ban on the publications by the Press of debates in the British Parliament removed, Gladstone was still maintaining (as Socrates did more than two thousand years ago and Vice‑President Nixon a few months ago) that wisdom and sound judgment resided in the few and not in the many. The two politicians claimed that the few were the government or those elected to the legislature.

Be this as it may, the Press assumes the function of a molder of the opinions of the many. In exercising this function in the Western world, the Press may use or abuse two freedoms: the freedom to publish and the freedom not to publish. The freedom to publish is subject to the limitations of the law of libel; the freedom not to publish has no legal limitation.

It has been claimed by Thomas Wright and others that our Daily Gleaner, which enjoys a virtual monopoly, generously fulfils its functions in the wide hospitality of its columns. This praise was (with some qualification) due under the management of Michael de Cordova. The position appears to be somewhat different under the present management.

Michael de Cordova had no inhibitions save and except the firm resolve not to give free advertisement to any and not to give or sell any advertisement to what was euphemistically called "competitive publications". A "competitive publication" might be the weekly "Public Opinion" or some obscure monthly magazine, or even an annual.

The new management thinks that this "long established basic policy" might be "due for review"; and there is evidence that the long established basic policy has been relaxed of late; but there is a new inhibition which was never in evidence in the days of Michael de Cordova, that of claiming the right to censor disapproved views, to decide what is good and what is not good for you or for me to read in the Gleaner.

Sufficient material has not been gathered to determine the volume or exact channels of the censorship; but there is clear evidence that it exists; and that it has nothing whatever to do with obscenity or defamation.

The American Press exercises censorship to a marked degree over everything of a leftist tendency; and it appears to do so on occasion at the bidding of the big advertiser. There is no evidence that the Gleaner censorship is influenced by the advertiser. It seems rather to be exercised on the judgment of a sort of self‑constituted arbiter elegantiarum.

The American press never gives a reason for refusing to publish an article or to advertise a book; the Gleaner is somewhat more speciously genial. It gives not one but two alternative reasons for the censorship, leaving the would‑.be contributor or advertiser in doubt as to the determining factor which excludes him. For example an article has been refused on the ground that it is "unfair", and besides, "the Gleaner is not taking sides". Or advertisement of a magazine is refused with mention of the "long established basic policy of the Gleaner which is due for review" but "the nature of the publication also has a bearing on the matter."

By and large, this writer believes that, when the evidence is gathered, it will be found that the exercise of the Gleaner censorship is more pronounced and exclusive than Thomas Wright and others think.

There was a time when contributors of any, political or philosophical complexion were made very welcome to the columns of the Gleaner. Now, one may be tossed out on a two‑pronged fork that leaves one puzzled, frustrated and hurt. People do not like to have their contributions arbitrarily labeled "unfair" or their advertisements rejected with a "procul, O! procul este, profani". If there were another, daily newspaper in the island, the hurt might not be so grievous.

EINSTEIN SAYS

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual toward freedom. It is no mere chance that our older universities have developed f r o m clerical schools. Both churches and universities in so far as they live up to their true function serve the ennoblement of the individual. They seek to fulfill the great task by spreading moral and cultural understanding, renouncing the use of brute force.

Volume 3. Number 10. FEBRUARY 1959

SECESSION IS SUBVERSION

Make no mistake about it: by act of Government, whether we like it or not, we are pledged to Federation. Secession therefore is subversion.

Logically, it is too late to try to take the point that Federation is unwise or premature; perhaps too late to argue that we should have Confederation rather than Federation. Although such argument may be futile, perhaps however public pressure may force the argument in this direction and prevent the head-on collision of secession or subversion.

In a sense we are nearly a hundred years late in the pretence that we have the power of self‑determination in the matter of Federation. The Constitution was surrendered in 1865; and the surrender was the fount and origin of government (and constitution‑making) by Order in Council. Our political masters of the day willed it so without reference to the people. Now we have been federated without reference to the people, ostensibly by our local political masters, but actually and inexorably by Order in Council.

Is it not strange (or is it?) that drastic constitutional changes are made without previous submission to the constituencies? So it was in 1865 before party politics; and so again under the Bustamante Government of 1949‑'54, and so again in 1955‑'56 under the Manley Government. (For it is clear beyond prevarication that Bustamante shares full responsibility with Manley).

Nevertheless on each occasion the constituencies knew very well what was being done. In 1865 they were supine through political ignorance and panic. Each went the way of his particular phobias; the whites and coloured were jealous of each other and feared the blacks; the blacks feared both of them. In the prevailing anglolatry of the day, they all seemed to say: "bearer be ruled by England". In 1949‑'54 and again in 1955‑56 the constituencies were supine simply because they "couldn't bother". (The Jamaican is proverbially politically inert except on a ballyhoo for ceremonial, for celebration, for demonstration of joy ‑ or sorrow).

Although feeling is now running strongly against Federation (fanned by the two Jamaican architects of Federation, Bustamante deliberately and with malice aforethought, Manley involuntarily by his explosive quasi‑political response to Grantley Adams's ineptitude) it is well to bear in mind that secession is subversion. Subversion is however by definition an act of the people not an act of Government. And here is a paradox: if secession is subversion and subversion treason, "treason doth never proper; what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason," or subversion.

But why worry? Perhaps the tree should never have been planted; perhaps it was planted out of season; perhaps the first fruits are forced‑ripe; yet a thriftless plant can be nurtured to maturity, and forced‑ripe fruit has been known to yield place to good fruit.

PREGNANT PERIODS IN JAMAICAN HISTORY

In the eighteen twenties t h e r e were some Jamaicans, persons of colour, who made their mark in Jamaican history and of whom we shall hear more later. Edward Jordan and Robert Osborn a n d Richard Hill had attained their majority, Alexander Heslop (later Attorney General) was a boy of twelve and George William Gordon was an infant in arms. The new Jamaica, with substantial political and a modicum of social recognition for persons of colour was already at hand.

Absentee proprietorship was still largely in vogue; and the time was approaching when estates and plantations would be gradually slipping into the hands as owners of local white and coloured attorneys. White and coloured children, sired by whites, were often sent to England and Scotland for education. There white and coloured mixed on terms of social equality; !but this idea of equality was rudely shattered on the return of the coloured folk to Jamaica. (Grant Allen's "In All Shades" gives a vivid picture of these conditions.).

It was in this school of social discrimination, that the coloured folk of the nineteenth century were reared in Jamaica. These conditions gave rise in some cases to a fine reserve and self‑confidence grounded on consciousness of merit, and often of moral and intellectual superiority and real achievement; but in many cases it set up false standards of value involving colour prejudice among the grades of colour, and often of course there arose feelings of social frustration and resentments due to an inferiority complex. One resultant feature was the strong British loyalties which developed among persons of colour, making deep inroads into the local loyalties which generally arise out of attachment to one's own country; and which were to have serious political repercussions in 1885.

It should be borne in mind that time and again the British Government came to the rescue of the despised and underprivileged in Jamaica, of the slaves seeking relief from oppression and finally from slavery, and of the coloured folk seeking relief from disabilities; and, after emancipation, of peasant and labourer seeking relief from an oppressive plantocracy. So that in the minds of the bulk of the population strong British loyalties arose from a sense of gratitude for favours received and from confidence in the inherent relative sense of justice of the British. These sentiments, which had solid foundation, were sedulously encouraged by officialdom.

The evils of absenteeism reacted on agriculture, morals and treatment of slaves. The Attorney was ‑remune