Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

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Various. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 60, No. 374, December, 1846

KOHL IN DENMARK AND IN THE MARSHES

LORD METCALFE'S GOVERNMENT OF JAMAICA

ANNALS AND ANTIQUITIES OF LONDON

MARLBOROUGH'S DISPATCHES

MILDRED;

Part I. Chap. I

Chapter II

CHAPTER III

THE LAW AND ITS PUNISHMENTS

LAYS AND LEGENDS OF THE THAMES

RECENT ROYAL MARRIAGES

ST MAGNUS', KIRKWALL

THE GAME LAWS

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The death of Lord Metcalfe excited one universal feeling – that his country had lost a statesman whom she regarded with the highest admiration, and the warmest gratitude. The Times, and the other public journals, in expressing that feeling, could only give a general and abridged memoir of this great and good man. Every part of his public life – and that life commencing at an unusually early period – stamps him with the reputation of a statesman endowed in an eminent degree with all the qualities which would enable him to discharge the most arduous and responsible duties. Every part of it presents an example, and abounds in materials, from which public men may derive lessons of the most practical wisdom, and the soundest rules for their political conduct. His whole life should be portrayed by a faithful biographer, who had an intimate acquaintance with all the peculiar circumstances which constituted the critical, arduous, and responsible character of the trusts committed to him, and which called for the most active exercise of the great qualities which he possessed. That part of it which was passed in administering the government of Jamaica, is alone selected for comment in the following pages. It is a part, short indeed as to its space, but of sufficient duration to have justly entitled him, if he had distinguished himself by no other public service, to rank amongst the most eminent of those, who have regarded their high intellectual and moral endowments as bestowed for the purpose of enabling them to confer the greatest and most enduring benefits on their country, and who have actively and successfully devoted those qualities to that noble purpose.

No just estimate of the nature, extent, and value of that service, and of those endowments, can be formed, without recalling the peculiar difficulties with which Lord Metcalfe had to contend, and which he so successfully surmounted, in administering the government of Jamaica.

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From no consideration of personal or political connexion, but purely from the conviction that Lord Metcalfe was eminently distinguished by these qualities, Lord John Russell offered to him the Government of Jamaica. He had just returned from the East Indies, where he had displayed the greatest ability, and met with almost unexampled success. He had scarcely tasted the sweets of the repose which he had promised himself. His acceptance of the Government was a sacrifice of that repose to his high sense of duty, and to the noble desire of rendering a great public service to his country.

But to little purpose would such a character have been selected, and to little purpose would he have possessed those eminent qualities, if he had been sent to Jamaica with instructions which would have controled their exercise. A more wise, just, and liberal policy was adopted by the government. Lord Metcalfe was left with the full, free, unfettered power of accomplishing, in his own manner, and according to his own discretion, the great object of his administration. Of the spirit of his instructions, and of the discretion and powers confided to him, he gives his own description in his answer to an address which, on his return to England, was presented him by the Jamaica proprietors resident in London, "I was charged by her Majesty's government with a mission of peace and reconciliation."

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