It again seems clear that any active employment of British troops against the Niverne on behalf of. The complete doctrine is that the parent state must assume that its offspring can do no wrong to the native population under its responsibility, and must be prepared to furnish troops in support of the local government when in trouble. In any case, statesmen here and in South Africa cannot afford at this time to forget the experiences of the past.
Indeed, if we may refer at this point to the tone of the colonial papers on the native subject, it would almost appear that the relative size of this element is greater in Natal than in the mother country. Yet we can often turn with relief to the editorials of the Natal Press for the rants of English journalists under the leadership of the "Black Peril" (a). The actual experience of the Natal colonist is uniformly fatal to this theory of danger to the whites, which in the past has proved a source of deadly danger to the blacks.
It has never been difficult to create panic in the minds of that section of society; but recent comments in the Natal Press testify to the contempt with which such alarms are regarded by the more experienced colonists. The penalties connected with the recent panic in various parts of Natal were, in the case of the Europeans, limited to indirect pecuniary loss, deserted property and premises, which had been scrupulously respected by the natives on all occasions. It must be remembered that the veil of martial law has hitherto hidden almost the whole of these cases from the Natal public.
Native tribes with no means of defense against the maxim gun and the latest type of repeating rifle (a), but assegais or knobkerries, supplemented in Zululand by a few more or less antiquated shot guns (b). a) See a recent telegram about the satisfactory effect of the latest life-destroying invention. To the domestic community, the instigator of panic among Europeans must show himself in the light of the most dangerous possible enemies of society. What confidence can the natives place in rnlers who flog a multitude of irresponsibles for a silly expression. Whenever any conclusion was obscured, it was so because of the events of the following year; and from that time to the present the conduct of the tribes of Natal and Zululand has uniformly strengthened the presumption against the value of such vaccinations.
Lord Carnarvon gave the following summary of the facts of the case, as they appear from the proceedings of the Court which inquired into the charges against the Chief:-. They were received by the government of Natal and allowed to live in the colony on condition that they occupied part of the base of the Drakensberg and performed certain tasks necessary for the defense of the District of Weenen. A part of this force, on arriving at the Bushman's Paos river, found a number of the tribe driving their cattle across the border, under the command of one of the Langalibalele chiefs.
Langalibalele, who at that time was already with another part of the tribe, was afterwards taken and brought to his trial before a tribunal composed of de. Shepstone found, ''after weighing all the circumstances of the case with the most anxious care,'' that the substantive offense actually found against Langalibalele amounted to this:—"I have been three times. As to the treatment of The Putini strain is little more necessary than quoting from the "Introduction."
The writer of an article in the Dail,y Telegraph, of the 5th inst., will agree with this.
CHAPTER IV
The native "has a very keen sense of juice." There is no missing acknowledgment of this truth in ancient official writings: as we have seen, it was advanced as an arrangement for retribution in the Putini tribe;. The land is not at war, but "proper jurisprudence" is abandoned and appeals to the first principles of justice are mocked by the whites. According to Leuchars bombastic condemnation of the chieftain king in Mapumulo di trict and "punishment".
Again, when the bombardment took place, the chief indunas, coming forward, ventured to ask the meaning of this ruthless act, and was told:—"It is the voice of the Chief." N~r was the actual voice of the representative of our great King more reassuring, when it was afterwards addressed to Dube, the editor of a native newspaper, the '' Star of Natal. as "a dangerous organ.". Judging from the three or four copies of this Native article which the present writer has read, it would appear that it was edited with a "tremulous" care which put it quite beyond the risk of any legal interference with it on the part of the authorities; and a Court Martial would, it is thought, discover that this was a description of evidence rather inconvenient to find.
A report of the ensuing dialogue is printed in Dube's journal of the 25th of May last, and can hardly be supposed to be worded otherwise than with scrupulous accuracy. Dube said that he knew this, but did not expect it from the English Government." " and which cannot be relied upon to-day before the Courts of Justice in the Colonies as a justification of the despotic proceedings in question.
O'Grady's statement cannot be considered more decisive for the present case than the declaration of the Seventy Ministers in 1874 on the matters about which they were so positive. the claims made by him, except as regards Dinuzulu, are precisely those of the Natal Mini trial. Is it not the best of these that can be seen in the fact that the tribes have already been, in effect, tried without trial, on the charge of conspiring to rebel. It must be considered in the interest of all concerned to be above all necessary that the cessation of martial law should be followed as soon as possible by an impartial inquiry into the most serious of all charges under which a native population may lie.
Obviously, such an inquiry, to satisfy the demands of common sense, must be made before persons of high judicial training, such as the Chief Justice of Natal and the Chief Justice of the Native High Court. Officials who have always acted in accordance with a sense of public duty and according to their best judgment need have no qualms about facing the test of such an inquisition; and if the proceedings were open, with the full representation of counsel on all sides, notwithstanding the finding of the tribunal, we might expect that the result would be a new period of public confidence, as if it could not for a moment be supposed that any other line of proceedings was likely to be established. Reading the accounts of how the desperate valor of the more warlike tribes on the Zulu frontier was roused, few Englishmen could refrain from expressing their full sympathy with the boys of our race who were called to do their duty.
Yet this elementary rule is so little observed that here in a Christian country, zealous for the propagation of religion, a magazine of position and influence may actually come to recommend emphatically the employment against the Zulus of "the methods of Joshua.". Moreover, we must not forget that the madness of the Zulus, who, as the red ruins spread over their peaceful homes, confront the deadly Rexer, must be no less taken into account than in the case of the British fighters it is alleged. and to see their own kith and kin slaughtered by the hundreds.
