The problem of the races in Africa / by Harriette E. Colenso.
- Colenso, Harriette Emily, 1847-1932.
- Date:
- 1897
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The problem of the races in Africa / by Harriette E. Colenso. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![to property and inheritance, according to simple and well- defined rules. The system was, to a great extent, created by and adapted to the conditions of a primitive, barbaric life, and, in some respects, it was not unlike that which prevailed among our Saxon ancestors. . . .* “ It appears that, although the chiefs have at times exer- cised despotic power to such an extent as to induce some witnesses to come to the conclusion that the will of the chief is law to his tribe, the power of making law does not in reality rest absolutely in the chief. The chief himself is subject to the laws in force when he assumed his chief- tainship. ... Mr. Orpen says that the laws of the Kafirs are not usually made by the chief and his councillors with- out reference to the people ; that the laws have all grown up among the people, and are only administered by the chief. That of . . . three laws altered by Moshesh [para- mount chief of the Basuto] only the one published after long council with the tribe . . . held its ground ; the other two, his individual commands, were failures. “ From this it will be seen that the natives have not been subject to the capricious laws made by a chief, but to laws emanating from the national will, which laws have been administered by the chief. . . . “ The inference we may draw from the whole evidence upon the subject is, that although natives have nothing corresponding to a representative form of government, their existing laws embody the national will, and that no chief would attempt to alter a law without taking the opinion of his councillors, or referring the change to the people. The conclusions thus stated by the Cape Commission are the more important because, though chiefly occupied with Cape Colony natives, the Commission examined as a witness on the one side Sir Theo. Shepstone, a principal supporter of the theory that by native law a “supreme * [Cape Pari. Papers, G. 4—83, Report, p. 14, para. 7.] t \Jbid., pp. 20, 21, para. 31.]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22395842_0006.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
