IsiXhosa Intellectual Traditions (IsiXIT) Digital Archive

THE PELZER CASE. THE law officers of the Crown in. the Colony must have greatly miscalculated the temper of Englishmen and others whose training and instincts are English if they thought they could hush up, by declining to prosecute, the cry of the black man's blood which has been spilt by PELZER near Burghersdorp. The evidence which first found publicity in the Cape Mercury would seem, to lay minds, to be enough to constitute a case sufficiently grave to be submitted to a jury. But political considerations are said to have warped the judgment of the Protectors of Justice. The consequence is that the country, through the Press and the Pulpit, is demanding, not vengeance, but justice, and is applying- the spur to the Attorney-General with the object that he should either state the points that weighed in his mind and led him to drop the prosecution, or have the case re-opened. Journals holding as diversified views on current politics as the Cape Mercury, the Journal, the East London Advertiser, the Bedford Advertiser, and the Graaff-Reinet Advertiser are unanimous in urging the Ministry to do its duty by the country whose honour is confided in their keeping, by dispelling the