Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa from 1873 to 1884, Volume 1 (1919).djvu/156

 136 History of the Cape Colony. [1878 In all other cases they acted just as their fathers had done before them. They decided in the intricate disputes connected with the marriage laws, they punished their adherents for assault or theft, and they appropriated to their own use any fines that they inflicted. Legally they could not do this, and they had no means of enforcing their decisions, but they were supported by their people, and it would have fared ill with any one who disobeyed their orders. Such a person would have become an outcast among his own relatives, and would have found no one willing to associate with him. For they were a conservative people, who clung to their own laws and customs, and who derided the principles of an English court of justice. That a man on trial should be told that he need not say anything to criminate himself, that he should not be cross-questioned and made to account for all his actions, seemed to them so utterly absurd that in speaking of it they were provoked to bursts of laughter. Or that every man living in a kraal to which a stolen ox was traced should not be held accountable for it, though only one of them had driven it there, seemed to them like perversion of justice, because all must have known, or ought to have known, of the theft, and when it was killed all would partake of the flesh. Thus there was very little respect for the European courts, and a strong national feeling in favour of the chiefs, which induced the people to refer their disputes to the heads and counsellors of their clans. The government now resolved that this must cease in the country west of the Kei. Small locations were established, and placed under the charge of European officials, who were required to keep strict supervision over the residents in them, and who might act as arbitrators in civil cases, but all criminal cases were to be tried by the resident magistrate of the district, or by a judge of the supreme court if they were sufficiently serious. In the centre of the part of the colony most densely populated