This Frequency Of Appeal To Written Laws, With Which The Pagan
Natives Are Necessarily Unacquainted, Has Given Rise In Their
Palavers to (what I little expected to find in Africa) professional
advocates, or expounders of the law, who are allowed
To appear and
to plead for plaintiff or defendant, much in the same manner as
counsel in the law-courts of Great Britain. They are Mohammedan
negroes, who have made, or affect to have made, the laws of the
prophet their peculiar study; and if I may judge from their
harangues, which I frequently attended, I believe, that in the
forensic qualifications of procrastination and cavil, and the arts
of confounding and perplexing a cause, they are not always surpassed
by the ablest pleaders in Europe. While I was at Pisania, a cause
was heard which furnished the Mohammedan lawyers with an admirable
opportunity of displaying their professional dexterity. The case
was this:- An ass belonging to a Serawoolli negro (a native of an
interior country near the river Senegal) had broke into a field of
corn belonging to one of the Mandingo inhabitants, and destroyed
great part of it. The Mandingo having caught the animal in his
field, immediately drew his knife and cut his throat. The
Serawoolli thereupon called a palaver (or in European terms, brought
an action) to recover damages for the loss of his beast, on which he
set a high value. The defendant confessed he had killed the ass,
but pleaded a SET-OFF, insisting that the loss he had sustained by
the ravage in his corn was equal to the sum demanded for the animal.
To ascertain this fact was the point at issue, and the learned
advocates contrived to puzzle the cause in such a manner that, after
a hearing of three days, the court broke up without coming to any
determination upon it; and a second palaver was, I suppose, thought
necessary.
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