- "I Have Been A Personal Witness To A Case In Which A Native Was Most Undeservedly Punished, From The Circumstance Of The Natives, Who Were The Only Persons Who Could Speak As To Certain Exculpatory Facts, Not Being Permitted To Give Their Evidence."

Under the law lately passed in South Australia, the evidence of natives would be receivable in a case of this

Kind, in palliation of the offence. Although it is more than questionable how far such evidence would weigh against the white man's oath; but for the purpose of obtaining redress for a wrong, or of punishing the cruelty, or the atrocity of the European [Note 115 at end of para.], no amount of native evidence would be of the least avail. Reverse the case, and the sole unsupported testimony of a single witness, will be quite sufficient to convict even unto death, as has lately been the case in two instances connected with Port Lincoln, where the natives have been tried at different times for murder, convicted, and two of them hung, upon the testimony of one old man, who was the only survivor left among the Europeans, but who, from the natural state of alarm and confusion in which he must have been upon being attacked, and from the severe wounds he received, could not have been in an advantageous position, for observing, or remarking the identity of the actual murderers, among natives, who, even under more favourable circumstances are not easily recognizable upon a hasty view, and still less so, if either they, or the observer, are in a state of excitement at the time.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 897 of 914
Words from 249805 to 250074 of 254601