THE POISON OF LYNCH LAW.
THEOrder in Council for the deportation of Mr. ialbraith Cole from British East Africa may excite casuistical protests from those who are ignorantly indifferent to the calamity of introducing lynch law into any of our colonies, but we feel sure that it will be approved by the far greater number who recognize the height and depth of the trust we exercise in such a colony as British East Africa. The facts are not in dispute. Mr. Cole had been troubled by sheep stealers, and. at last set out with the manager of his farm to hunt down the thieves. He came upon three natives in the forest plucking the wool from a sheepskin which was no doubt his own property. Two of the natives ran away, and Mr. Cole shot at one of them twice. The second shot brought the man down ; Mr. Cole walked up to him, looked at him, and left him to the care of the native who did not run away, and who may or may not have afterwards tended his dying comrade. This native reported the case to the police. Mr. Cole, when brought to trial, admitted that he did not even know that the native was dead till he was informed by the police, and said that he had not reported his act himself because he did not want to have any more trouble in the matter. At the trial the jury acquitted him, and Sir Percy Girouard, the Governor of British East Africa, described the verdict as a gross mis- carriage of justice. British East Africa is a Crown colony for which the Government at home is directly responsible; if, therefore, the Colonial Secretary had not intervened in some way to redress the miscarriage of justice he would have consented to a precedent which would have been disastrous to the ethical standard and, in fact, to the whole future of the colony.
We regret to find in the Times of Monday an article " from a correspondent" attacking the Colonial Secretary for his decision in Mr. Cole's case and virtually justifying Mr. Cole. The correspondent's opinions are very likely not those of the Times, but we are 80'11 that nothing was said on the other side, and that by the implication of silence the article seemed to be approved. A more sophis- tical argument we have never read. "In every criminal case," says the correspondent, " it is the attendant circumstances which demand at least equal consideration. Here the single additional fact in favour of the prosecution was that Mr. Cole did not report the death ; every other circumstance in connexion with the case is emphatically in his favour. He might have been a settler who was always having trouble with natives ; he is in fact known throughout the colony as a man who has invariably treated them fairly and generously, and is exceedingly popular with them." In other words, it is emphatically in favour of a man who deliberately kills someone that be has not deliberately killed others before—enough in his favour at least to justify his acquittal. And then the killer is so popular with the natives whom he has not killed ! The correspondent says that Mr. Cole's intention to kill was by no means established. We can quite believe that Mr. Cole only meant to wound, but when he had wounded the man be left him to his fate with inexcusable brutality. We know all the pleas about the difficulty of convicting natives in lonely districts, the cheapness in which natives themselves hold human life, and the gravity in their eyes of the offence of sheep stealing—comparable with horse stealing in England two hundred years ago—but none of these pleas is more than a miserable excuse for the action of a man of good birth and breeding who ought to have set the highest possible example of conduct to his fellow- settlers. The writer in the Times is particularly angry with the announcement that the order for deportation is due to the fact that Mr. Cole has " excited race enmity " in the colony. If providing the jurymen of a colony with the occasion to show that they ddsire to have one law of murder for the white and another for the black does not excite race enmity we cannot imagine what would. But the form of words used by the Colonial Secretary does not greatly matter ; the sense might be expressed in a hundred different ways according to the angle of view. The ventral question is whether in the circumstances deportation is 3ustified, and we hold that it is abundantly justified. " The worst that can be said of his [Mr. Cole's] action," writes the correspondent of the Times, "is that in a moment of great provocation he fired at and killed a native." Surely that is the very best that could be said. Mr. Cole set out deliberately to track the native, and at the end of the hunt shot the man and left him to die. The correspondent complains that Mr. Cole is " sent forth with a stigma on his name," and says nothing of the native who is sent out of the world with a bullet in his stomach. His inversions are most discreditable. He makes them more discreditable by in effect threatening the Government with the hostility of all the settlers in East Africa as a result of the deportation. There has been much bitterness and tension between the officials and the settlers in East Africa, but if the price of peace between them is to be a cynical recognition of lynch law we say, let the bitterness go on till justice emerges, as it will in the end, if the officials do their duty and remem- ber the high responsibility of their stewardship. We wish to make it perfectly plain that we are not in- dulging in any sentimental horror at the fact of natives being treated with severity. Severity may often be quite necessary. If in any colony the laws are not adequate to keep crime within reasonable limits— particularly such crime as offences against white women— we should not hesitate to make them more stringent. But it is intolerable that the laws of the country, whatever they may be, should be simply disregarded by those who are supposed to live under them. The practice of acting outside the law—of taking the law into one's own hands— is a poison which spreads with alarming rapidity and mortifies the whole body of a country. A country of lynch law is a country of no law. When every man may become the executioner of his fellows on the bare authority of his own conscience or judgment there is no security against injustice for anyone. The man who practises lynch law or in any way sanctions lynch law is the enemy of his country. How the poison may spread may be seen from the episode in Pennsylvania the other day when a lynching was carried out in a district which had never before experienced one, and carried out with a brutality exceeding that of States notorious for such things. Only the other day, too, we commented on the case of Mr. Sam Lewis in Rhodesia, who shot a native for making improper proposals to his daughter. We can quite believe that in lonely districts white women need more protection from the law, but this is no reason whatever for disregarding the law. We find. with much satisfaction that the South African newspapers condemn the acquittal of Mr. Lewis and emphasize the dangers of lynch law. We believe that the settlers in British East Africa will hold a similar opinion of lynch law, and like sensible men and good members of the Empire will refuse to admit such a disgrace to become established within their colony.
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