To continue from our last post� the Eyre affair. Governor James Eyre�s suppression of a �rebellion� in the Crown colony of Jamaica, and his subsequent trial by commission, is so much antiquarian dust today, but it shouldn't be. So we are grateful to two economists, David M. Levy and Sandra Peart, who have publicized this affair. In an interview with Reason magazine, these two sum up what they think they have discovered: the dark connection between opposition to laissez faire economics and racism. They are particularly focused on the chief disputants in England: Thomas Carlyle and John Stuart Mill. These men, for Levy and Peart, stand not only for themselves, but also for two different ideologies: one statist, paternalistic, ultimately socialist, and one laissez faire, individualistic, and liberal � in the classical sense.

Q: What were the connections between the contempt for markets and defense of slavery?
A: Markets bust hierarchy. Carlyle also coined the term "consumer sovereignty" in 1833. It was a sneering reference to political economist Richard Whately�s exchange theory of government, in which policy is viewed as a trade between something like equals. Carlyle�s view of the world was that it should be ruled by hierarchy and the worship of heroes. Obedience to the demands of your superiors was everything. The exchange inherent in markets -- rather than the command of hierarchy -- was anarchy.


That markets don't bust hierarchy is a claim that, of course, the two don't consider -- even though it certainly animates a large tradition in the left, which goes from the French Revolution to Galbraith. However, the tie between hierarchy and racism is the one that concerns us here. The Eyre affair seems to seal their case. After showing that the motives behind the defense of Eyre were demonstrably racist -- that is, the supposition that blacks were inferior, and thus not subject to the judicial conventions protecting whites, animates the protection of Eyre from the consequences of having misused black subjects -- Levy and Peart make a few bold leaps. One of them we will get back to in a further post: the claim that the Reactionary clique gave rise to eugenics. This, it seems to us, is a serious distortion of the historical record.


First, let's get back to what happened in Jamaica, in October of 1865. To get a broader view of the facts in the affair, we turned to an article in the Winter, 2000 Clio by Howard Fulweiler, a literature professor at UNC: The Strange Case of Governor Eyre: Race and the "Victorian Frame of Mind". Fulweiler begins, as Levy and Peart do, by claiming that the Eyre affair did reflect distinct cultural differences about race. Astonishingly, in our view, there are academics who claim that the affair was "undetermined' by attitudes towards race. Levy and Peart, who have given a paper on this topic, have made a disheartening discovery about race and racism. The view, currently, is that the past was simply a monologue of racism, from which we fortunate few have somehow emerged. Thus, Mill and Carlyle are lumped together, an indistinguishable duo: Carlyle with his pathological fixation on black bodies, Mill with his defense of the authoritarian rule that the imperial powers could extend to �barbarians.�

"Four months ago when we presented some of our research on the Dismal Science, we heard two criticisms. Two months ago at a conference where we presented different but related papers, we heard similar comments. The first was a rather simple but damning consideration�'Everyone in Victorian England was a racist, so why be particularly annoyed with Carlyle, Ruskin or anyone else's attitudes?'

Clich� liquidates history in the name of stupidity. The dispute between Mill and Carlyle on race was not the nitpicking of two blind lacemakers over the pattern of the drapes. It was a fundamental, and stirring, conflict. Mill�s letter to Carlyle, when Carlyle wrote a piece in the Fraser magazine with the disgusting title, �The N- Question� (I bowdlerize because I don�t want hits to this site based on searches for the word. It is depressing enough to get hit on for �cocksucker� and the like), is an all too little known piece of liberatory lit. Here�s the beginning of it:

�SIR,� Your last month�s number contains a speech against the �rights of Negroes,� the doctrines and spirit of which ought not to pass without remonstrance. The author issues his opinions, or rather ordinances, under imposing auspices no less than those of the �immortal gods.� �The Powers,� �the Destinies,� announce, through him, not only what will be, but what shall be done; what they �have decided upon, passed their eternal act of parliament for.� This is speaking �as one having authority;� but authority from whom l If by the quality of the message we may judge of those who sent it, not from any powers to whom just or good men acknowledge allegiance. This so-called �eternal act of parliament� is no new law, but the old law of the strongest � a law against which the great teachers of mankind have in all ages protested � it is the law of force and cunning; the law that whoever is more powerful than an other, is �born lord� of that other, the other being born his �servant,� who must be �compelled to work� for him by �beneficent whip,� if �other methods avail not.� I see nothing divine in this injunction. If �the gods� will this, it is the first duty of human beings to resist such gods. Omnipotent these �gods� are not, for powers which demand human tyranny and injustice cannot accomplish their purpose unless human beings co�perate. The history of human improvement is the record of a struggle by which inch after inch of ground has been wrung from these maleficent powers, and more and more of human life rescued from the iniquitous dominion of the law of might. Much, very much of this work still remains to do; but the progress made in it is the best and greatest achievement yet performed by mankind, and it was hardly to be expected at this period of the world that we should be enjoined, by way of a great reform in human affair, to begin undoing it.�

This clear account of the case makes even passages in Ruskin, one of the great Victorian rhetoricians, look as shabby as peeling gilt. It is, by the way, interesting how pieces of prose on this side were regarded at the time. Bagehot, one of the many sympathizers of the Confederacy in the British press, found Lincoln�s speeches and writings grotesque and ungrammatical.

Fulweiler makes a move, in his article, that would have made Levy and Peart�s essay stronger: he provides some background for the revolt. This is crucial stuff, since it seems to contravene Levy and Peart's thesis, or at least gives them something to explain. The "rebellion" occurred in the context of unemployment and the disinclination of the colonial government to protect small freeholders against the plantation party. The period succeeding emancipation saw a great increase in unemployment in Jamaica. The slave-owners, who were plantation owners, responded to the liberation of the slaves in two ways: they held onto their position in the Island as the chief generators of wealth -- they did not break out of the sugar dominated system, in other words; and they refused outlay to create infrastructure for the ex-slaves. There was no schooling, none of the supports, even of legality, that would make it possible for the ex-slaves to establish autonomous economic structures. The black and mulatto population petitioned Queen Victoria for redress. In other words, they requested the state's intervention in their economic plight. This goes unmentioned in Levy and Peart's account, but it tells us something about the kind of intellectual history they are pursuing: they are careless of the constituencies of the ideas represented by their champions. In many ways, the rebel movement is consonant with the Chartists, and the nascent union movements in England, both of which were criticized by Carlyle. The intervention petitioned for was not �free trade,� but for some security net. Of course, Levy and Peart could argue that the only way to achieve economic viability would have been through free trade � trade, for instance, with countries outside the British domain � but it is hard to see how small freeholders in Jamaica would have benefited from this.


Governor Eyre's suppression of the rebellion, which amounted to a riot in which 25 people were killed, including some white plantation owners, was to declare martial law, march militia (interestingly, composed of white, mulatto and black Maroon soldiers) into St. Thomas Parish, where the revolt was centered, and kill and whip. But what truly stirred up the intellectuals in London was what happened next:



"At the center of the ensuing storm was George William Gordon, a mulatto landowner, magistrate, member of the Assembly, and Baptist minister, who had championed the cause of the black poor, and had been an implacable enemy of Governor Eyre. Gordon had spoken several times at Bogle's church [Bogle, you will remember from the last post, was the rebel leader- LI] and had ordained him as a Deacon. Governor Eyre believed, as did many others, that Gordon was the mastermind behind the rebellion. Since Gordon was in Kingston during the disturbance, where there was no martial law, the Governor had him arrested, transported on The Wolverine to Morant Bay where he was quickly courtmartialed by junior officers and hanged on October 23 with the express approval of Governor Eyre. Although many deplored the general brutality exercised by the troops, it was the execution of Gordon which later would offer an opportunity to charge Eyre with murder."



Gordon's murder was at the heart of Mill's indignation, Carlyle's defense of Eyre, and the alliance of the evangelicals with the evolutionists. We'll discuss this in another post. Probably not the next one - indignation calls, we have other issues and tasks -- but soon.