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.

66

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

feature of the case. It is sufficient that the Court allowed him to adopt that course, and having permitted him in that stage of the proceeding to go into a justification of the crime imputed to him, who could have dreamt that his own argument would thus be turned against himself, when that very argument was conditional, and depended altogether upon a fact that remained to be proved, and which fact the prisoner, in his interrogatories, had solemnly denied?

It is also not unimportant to observe that as no copy or record of the prisoner's pleadings was preserved, the Commissioners, whose imperfect knowledge of the English language was manifested in every stage of the trial, must have come to a decision upon their supposed apprehension of what was said or admitted by the prisoner in the course of a long and rapid extemporaneous address, the greater part of which must have been unintelligible to the Court.

I purposely avoid touching upon other parts of this case that are open to much observation, or making any distinction between the proceedings of the first and second hearing, not willing to raise trifling objections or to discuss dubious points, and being mainly anxious to bring the most important feature of the case under consideration, and to place it in a clear and satisfactory point of view. If I have succeeded in doing this, and in showing that the supposed admissions of the prisoner rest altogether on a mistaken view of his argument, and consequently that there is a total absence of all evidence of his guilt, then I hope the result of this trial will lead to an early and effectual amendment of the judicial system of this colony.

As I am influenced by no personal feelings towards any of the parties concerned, and have no interested or factious purposes to serve, I shall not stop to apologize for interfering in a matter in which I may have only an indirect interest. It is that interest however which every British subject must have, who is jealous of the honour of his country, and able to appreciate the blessings of a just and impartial administration of the laws. It is not the cause nor the conduct of Mr. Edwards that I am advocating-I know nothing of him whatever-neither is it the cause of any individual or any party in which I am interested, but it is the great cause of law and justice, the very foundation and security of all our civil and religious rights, that induces me to take up the pen.

Instead of envying the feelings of those persons who can view with indifference measures the most unconstitutional or unjust, because they do not immediately affect themselves, or for fear of the consequences, I rather desire to imitate the example of an eminent philanthropist, the late Mr. Granville Sharp, who considered it a duty, and made it a point never to conceal his sentiments on any

subject of moment whenever there was a probability of answering any good purpose by avowing them. He was convinced that right was not only to be adopted, but to be maintained on all occasions without regard to consequences probable or possible, for these must after all be left to the disposal of Divine Providence, which has declared a blessing in favour of right. Fully concurring in these sentiments,

Cape Town, June 10, 1824.

I remain, &c. &c.

However criminal the former life of Edwards may have been, there was at least one Judge on the bench before which he was tried who had merited transportation at least as well as he. Mr. Bresler, who was one of the members of the Court that condemned this man, and who also sat on the trial of his former colleague, Buissinné, was discovered soon afterwards to have himself been guilty of defrauding the revenue to the amount of several thousand pounds. This fraud had taken place some years ago, when Bresler held the office of Receiver. It had (large as the sum was) escaped the notice of the auditor; and came to light at last only through the scrutiny of the Commissioners of Inquiry in examining the old accounts. The wretched man did not await a trial l; but, as soon as he found that detection and infamy were inevitable, he went home and cut his throat!

It is a singular coincidence, that Bresler was the Commissioner of the Court for the trial of Buissinné. What must his feelings have been when sitting on the judgment-seat! What may have been the feelings of others similarly circumstanced!

It is a fact not less singular and striking, that there now exists, in the hand-writing of the unfortunate Bresler, a paper sent to England by him after the second capture of the Colony, disclosing the names of all those who were concerned in the robbery of the public treasury in the night of the 6th January 1806, and stating the precise share of plunder which each individual obtained on that occasion; and that in this remarkable document are to be found the names of some others who also occupied seats upon the immaculate bench that condemned Buissinné, Edwards, and Carnall.

Such is a slight specimen of the impartiality and purity of the worshipful Court of Justice, which holds at its disposal (or at the disposal of the fearful power that may move all its pegs at pleasure) the property, characters, and lives of his Majesty's subjects at the Cape of Good Hope.

The office of Colonial Secretary is a high and honourable appointment from home; but the Colonial Secretary is only the hand, which must not question what the head dictates. He possesses no power even of protesting against the most culpable actions of the Governor. If he ventures to quarrel with him, he is ruined. The

late Secretary, Colonel Bird, so long as he retained the good graces of Lord Charles Somerset, was favoured and smiled upon, and promoted by the home Government. The moment he lost the graces of the Governor, and ventured to remonstrate against some of his measures, all the merit of his long and active services was cancelled; and, though unimpeached in his public character, he was dismissed at once from his office by Lord Bathurst, and without a reason assigned, merely because Lord Charles Somerset required it.

Every proclamation of the Governor is a law at the Cape; and whether it be an entirely new enactment or an abrogation of an old one, or however inconsistent it may be with colonial law and practice, or with former proclamations still in force, it must be obeyed if the Governor wills. Nay, proclamations directly at variance with each other, may be equally in force, and either side may be acted upon according as the authorities find expedient; and the people are bound to know and obey those decrees, though they may be at the same time denied access to peruse them at the public offices where alone they are to be found upon record.*

In fine, it may be affirmed without the slightest exaggeration, that the Governor of the Cape of Good Hope possesses a practical authority, under the British dominion, infinitely more despotic and uncontrolled than any absolute sovereign in Europe, and, excepting in the use of the bowstring and scimitar, more resembling the despotism of a Turkish Pasha than any other sort of Government with which we can readily compare it. At Cape Town, where there are always to be found some independent men among the mass of civil functionaries, military officers, Indian residents, and British merchants, and where public opinion has consequently never entirely lost its influence, the exercise of direct oppression, the bold arm of naked despotism, have been less frequently displayed. It is in the provinces that the system is openly exemplified in all its deformity; and to the remote provinces I shall therefore conduct the reader in my next article.

TO A LADY, ON HEARING HER SING.

OH! breathe again that strain divine,
Sweet seraph-daughter of the Nine;
For, lo! Pieria's Muses throng
To hear from earth so sweet a song.

Examples of this fact will be given hereafter.