be confined on Robben Island, or some other secure place, until a fit opportunity occurs for his removal; the day of the prisoner's embarkation to be considered as the day of the prisoner's banishment; with condemnation of the prisoner in the costs."

The place of confinement here pointed out, Robben Island, is that where all the convicts are kept. The charge of perjury originated in what can hardly be considered otherwise than a wilful misconstruction of the following oath, quarterly taken by the Receiver of Land Revenue: he swears-"I hereby make oath, that the above is a just, true, and full account of the receipts in this department, to the best of my knowledge and belief."-Now, all the books were perfectly correct, the money had been received as therein stated, but misapplied to the amount above-mentioned; this latter, therefore, alone constituted the offence, and there was, therefore, no particle of justifiable ground for this heavy charge, much less can the inflicting a punishment on account of it be justified, without trying its validity, and putting the accused upon his defence. What then shall be said of so scandalous a sentence? What shall be said of the conduct of Lord Charles Somerset, in confirming it? Mr. Buissinné noted a further appeal, but on account of some delay beyond the exact term prescribed, of which the Court of Appeals took advantage, the appeal was refused; and Lord Charles Somerset, who, as sole judge in the said Court, might have waived the objection, did, on the contrary, confirm the unwarrantable sentence of the Court of Justice, although he declared at the same time, in writing, when signing his fiat, that the charge of perjury (which is the ground of the aggravated sentence) could not be maintained, " because of this there is no record:" thus confirming the punishment, whilst he denied the ground on which it was awarded; and Mr. Buissinné remains to this day suffering under its consequences.

Case of Edwards.

The second case is that of William Edwards. This person was a stranger in the colony of the Cape, having arrived here from the Isle of France some time in 1823. After a short residence in the colony, he was authorized by the local government to act as notary public, which thereby assigned him a public character and station in the colony. In that capacity, he soon made himself conspicuous, and was extremely troublesome to several individuals, and particularly in those instances in which he could find an opportunity of addressing a public functionary. It seemed then to be his particular study how he could be most grossly insulting. In consequence of his extraordinary and generally offensive conduct, different conjectures as to his origin and former course of life were set afloat, according to the different feelings he had excited, none of them very flattering to him, but still all equally vague and unsupported by proof. But with Edwards's character, origin, or former course of life, we

have nothing to do on the present occasion. Let these be what they may, he was entitled, in common with every other British subject, to impartial justice, and to a fair and honest administration of the laws, whether he claimed their protection, or was considered to have rendered himself amenable to them.

Sometime in May 1824, two letters, addressed to Lord Charles Somerset, were delivered at the Government House by some person unknown. These letters were said to have been signed in the manner the notary Edwards usually signed his name, and the writing to resemble his; and therefore it was supposed that no one but himself could have been the author of them. The contents of these letters moreover were construed to be libellous; and, upon this supposition and this construction, Edwards was apprehended, put into gaol as a criminal, without any one being allowed to have access to him, or himself being permitted the use of pen, ink, or paper. In that state he remained for some time, when the "Act of Crime" or Indictment was, according to custom, read to him, by which he was charged with being the author of the said libel. This charge he peremptorily denied. After a convenient time he was put to the bar, to be tried upon the indictment. The trial lasted several days, during which Edwards indulged himself in venting his feelings against Lord Charles Somerset, of whose public and private character he drew a most hideous picture; and it certainly evinces the imbecility of the Court that it permitted such irrelevant matter to be spoken in its hearing, which nevertheless took up several hours in delivering. No attempt was made to prove the contents of the aforesaid letters to have been libellous; which made Edwards say, in his defence, that there was no corpus delicti. Nothing like proof was adduced to bring the writing, signing, or the delivering of the said letters home to Edwards; and not only was nothing of the sort proved against the prisoner, but the Court absolutely refused to examine any witnesses at all, either for the prosecution or on behalf of the prisoner; yet without hesitation they nevertheless found him guilty! The reason of their refusal to examine witnesses is obvious. Had they admitted witnesses on the one side, they must have done so on the other; and Edwards might then have introduced, and probably substantiated, some parts of his speech before alluded to. It was, therefore, much the easiest and safest way to pronounce him guilty, without going through the forms of proving him to be so, or running the risk of his establishing his innocence. Indeed, at the trial, (but too late, according to the forms of the court,) Edwards's advocate asked leave to examine a witness, who should prove who the writer of the said letters was, and that he was not then in the colony, and consequently, that the prisoner at the bar was not the writer, as he stood charged to be. The admission of this witness was refused, although it was proposed, had he been admitted, to have Oriental Herald, Vol. 11.

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established, by his examination, the innocence of the prisoner. But the Court had made up their minds, and without further demur they returned a verdict of guilty. Not that the prisoner had been really proved so, or that a particle of the charges had been brought home to him, as already observed; but they founded their verdict upon some expression which he used in the warmth of argument, while speaking hypothetically, which the Court not distinguishing, or not comprehending, they considered to be a confession or admission of the crime alleged against him, notwithstanding that his formal denial was in writing before them; and having come to that conclusion, there remained only to pass the sentence. This they did with equal facility and severity; they sentenced him to seven years' transportation to Botany Bay—a punishment quite unknown to the Dutch laws, and which, therefore, ought not to have been tacked to the code, to be arbitrarily inflicted on a British subject; who, had he been tried in England for the same offence, and there proved guilty, could not have been subjected to such punishment: imprisonment and fine would have been the utmost which the law would have awarded. It is unheard of under any government but that of an arbitrary despot, that a man for a mere libel, were he even proved guilty of it, should be declared a felon, thrown into irons for a number of years, be carried beyond the seas, and rendered infamous for the remainder of his life. Who will not join in the wish that this sentence, so iniquitously awarded, could be transferred from the unfortunate prisoner to the judges who have awarded it!

This sentence having been confirmed by Lord Charles Somerset, the prisoner flattered himself for a considerable time that it would not be carried into execution. The Minerva transport, however, having touched at the Cape in her way to New South Wales, the prisoner was ordered to be taken on board. All the horrors of his situation then broke upon his mind, and in a fit of despair he attempted to commit suicide by cutting his throat. In this attempt he was not completely successful, and the wound was sewed up and dressed. A strait waistcoat was put on the wretched man, and in that state he was carried on board the transport and sent away.

It has been since ascertained that this Edwards was a convict who had escaped from Botany Bay. This proof of what was previously suspected by all good men in the colony-that he was a worthless and unprincipled vagabond,-may probably destroy all public sympathy for the individual victim; but ought this consideration in any degree to mitigate our abhorrence of the iniquity of his sentence? The Government had itself given him a status of respectability in the colony by appointing him (on whatever grounds) a notary public. Of his former life or character nothing whatever was known at the Cape at the time of his condemnation, and, even

if known, ought not to have influenced a Court before whom he merely appeared as a person accused of libelling the Governor.

The sentiments of impartial men at the Cape, on this occasion, may be appreciated from the following letter, addressed, at the time, to the Editor of the Cape Government Gazette, by a gentleman of very great respectability in the East India Company's civil service, but which was refused insertion, notwithstanding that the writer communicated his own name.

To the Editor of the Cape Town Gazette.

SIR, The Cape Town Gazette' being now the only medium through which any discussion of public measures can take place, I am induced to trouble you with a few observations on the trial for libel which has recently terminated in the Court of Justice, the result of which has caused such unfeigned surprise and indignation throughout this town.

Pending the trial, I should have thought it highly indecorous and prejudicial to the ends of justice to have made any comments on the case; but now that the proceedings are closed, no well founded objection can exist to a candid examination into the nature of the evidence on which the Court may be supposed to have come to a conclusion. There is no intention whatever of going into the merits of the case. I purposely, in the present instance, confine myself to remarks on matters of evidence, upon the proper regulation of which the impartial administration of justice as much depends as upon the legal knowlege and personal purity of the judges themselves. The liberal policy which dictated the advertisement in your paper of the 22d of May last, inviting the establishment of an independent newspaper in Cape Town, encourages me to hope that you will the more readily afford a place in your columns to a communication that can have no other effect (and none other is intended) than to promote the pure administration of justice, and to satisfy the public mind on points that are vital to the personal safety of every individual in the colony.

With a very limited knowledge of the Law of England, and totally ignorant of the Dutch Legislative code, I take it for granted that the latter, no less than the former, requires full proof of guilt, oral or documentary, before an individual can be convicted of any crime that may be laid to his charge.

Now I will venture to assert it as the opinion of every lawyer and of every unprejudiced man who was present, that not a tittle of evidence was adduced on the part of the prosecutor, in the late trial, to show that any connection existed between the prisoner and the letters that are said to constitute the libel for which he was indicted. Whether he was, bona fide, the author of those letters or not, is not a question in which I take any interest; I only

care to know whether he has been legally convicted. This question, by its magnitude and importance, absorbs every other, and must occupy the thoughts of every man in whose breast the love of justice and the honour of his country are not extinct.

I have been told, but on what authority it is not for me to say, that the only evidence of his criminality of which the Court consider themselves in possession, are the prisoner's own pleadings in support of his "exceptions" which he urged before the Commissioners. Now the prisoner having in his interrogatories positively denied that he was the author of the letters in question, I shall not stop to question the legality or the humanity of the Court that would convict a man on casual expressions, used by him in the heat of argument, when they had on their table his recorded and deliberate denial of the charge, but shall proceed to show that even that imaginary proof-that shadow of a shade, has no existence whatever in point of fact.

To stop the trial in limine, the prisoner proposed four exceptions to the consideration of the Court. The second is the only one it is now intended to notice. It went to show that, even if he were the author of the letters in question, there was neither (in the language of the law) any corpus delicti, nor proof of criminality.

It is under this head of his argument that the prisoner is said to have made those admissions of his guilt which are supposed to supersede the necessity of all further proof; than which a greater mistake (to call it by no harsher term) never was committed by any set of men having the use of their reason.

To any one who heard the trial it was evident that the whole argument on the second exception was put hypothetically, that it was built upon the supposition of its being proved that the prisoner was the author or publisher of the libel. "If," said he, "I am the author of the letters, then I contend there is no criminality in them." This hypothesis was the very hinge on which his whole argument turned. Had he acknowledged himself to be the author, and proceeded to vindicate what he had done, then, whatever questions might have arisen as to the magnitude of his offence and the measure of punishment due to it, there could have been none as to the verdict; but to torture an argument purely hypothetical, a concession made merely and confessedly for the sake of argument, into an admission of guilt, is to convert shadows into realities, to confound the meaning of words, and to sap the very foundations of all reasoning and justice.

Whether it was regular and legal, or whether the prisoner was well advised in proposing exceptions to the competency of the Court, to enter so largely into what might be considered the body of his defence, are questions quite immaterial, and foreign to the consideration of what appears to me by far the most important