IsiXhosa Intellectual Traditions (IsiXIT) Digital Archive

THE GREAT STATE TRIAL. T HE attention of the country has, during the last fortnight, been rivetted by the great State Trial that ended at Graham's Town on Monday week in the acquittal of the so-called culprit The trial to which we allude is that instituted by the Solicitor-General, Mr. MAASDORF, countenanced by the Government in the person of the AttorneyGeneral and head of the law and the Government, against the Rev. J. D. DON, the much revered minister of the Presbyterian Church of this town. We presume that the circumstances of the case are well known to our Native readers by this time, as we have taken care, from time to time, to acquaint them of each step with respect to the proceedings that arose out of the shooting and killing of one of our colour in January last, by a Dutchman of the name of PELSER, near Burgherdorp. To refresh the memories of our readers, however, it will not be out of place briefly to relate the circumstances. But before doing so it may be stated for the information of our people that the SolicitorGeneral is the officer who is, properly speaking, the deputy of the Attorney-General in the Eastern Districts, and is charged with the very important and serious duty of protecting the subjects of the Queen in the enjoyment of their lives and property, and of bringing to justice all those who in any way injure the lives or the property of such Queen's subjects. Having premised the above we may go on with the statement of the facts. On the 16th January last, ZECHARIAH, a Christian Native, was killed by PELSER, and it was taken for granted that the perpetrator of the deed would, in the ordinary course, be brought before a judge and jury. The SolicitorGeneral at first resolved to bring PELSER to trial, but to the surprise of not a few the case was dropped like a hot potato, and Mr. MAASDORF has been indiscreet enough to tell the public that ' nothing further would have come of it had it not been for party politics.' It was not, however, so dropped until after telegrams had appeared in the newspapers that the Dutchmen of Burghersdorp were purchasing arms and ammunition with a view to preventing the regular course of the law in this particular case. An impression thus went abroad that this and other reasons had contributed to a failure of justice. At any rate nothing more was heard of the matter, until the Cape mercvry by publishing portions of the preliminary examination, which showed that there ' was a sufficient case to submit before a judge and a jury, called attention to a matter which might have been overlooked by the European public at least. Our countrymen in Burghersdorp and Herschel were most indignant over the matter, as it was currently stated that it was not the first time PELSER had behaved harshly towards them, and the inglorious end of this case had put the seal upon the belief, which pre- ! vious failures had already produced in the minds of the Natives, that the much-boasted justice of the English people was, so far as this Colony was concerned, nothing more than a mere name. Fortunately for our people and for the credit of the Colony we have still among us high-souled gentlemen who possess tender and refined consciences, and who still set store by the honour and credit of the British name and nation. At the risk of incurring unpopularity, and drawing upon itself much odium in high circles, the Cape Mercury laid the facts of this scandalous business open for public inspection, and challenged the heads of the law either to explain or justify their masterly inactivity in a matter involving the shedding of the blood of a liege sub ject of the Queen in a British de- pendency. There was no response. The Colonial Press took the matter up in the same strain. All in vain. The Crown officers were as deaf to the voice of the Press as BAAL was to the voice of his despairing worshippers. But a solemn and serious protest from the incisive pen of Mr. DON was alone destined to break open the grave of official indifference. He, with true Scotch tenacity of purpose, vigorously demanded for the unhappy ZECHARIAH that precious justice for which the ancestors of the Scotch and English people had freely shed their blood but two or three generations ago, and demonstrated to grasping and im- perious kings that they feared GOD more than they feared earthly tyrants and potentates, and were zealous of public liberty. In his vigorous denunciation of corruption in high quarters, Mr. DON had but to call PELSER a 'wretched murderer ' than the whole machinery of the law was set in motion to dis- grace, if not to crush him. That public money should, in these straitened times, have been spent in effecting the degradation of a mini- ster of CHRIST'S Gospel in a Christian country, to say nothing of the fact of the country being a British Colony, for venturing to unburden his conscience cn a public scandal, is a circumstance un- paralleled in the annals of the great English nation. It could easily be understood, indeed, none would be- grudge the expense, if the expaditure had been devoted to probing the unsatisfactory features of the case, which a cultured and a Christian mind and a humane disposition could not contemplate with equani¬mity. And it is amazing that this overtaxed community has so far as our observation goes, not been struck by this aspect of the question. We do not intend to analyse the evidence adduced in this deplorable affair. Mr. MAASDORF'S lame and pitiful address, Mr. SOLOMON'S brilliant oration, and the eloquent, exhaustive, and luminous summing-up of Sir JACOB BARRY are before the public, and they disclose facts of a most damning character to PELSER, and if there were in the community any sceptics of the time-honoured proverb that ' Murder will out,' they must have received a rude awakening when PELSER asked for and the Attorney-General agreed to issue his fiat, and Mr. MAASDORP put the copestone by consenting to prosecute the Rev. JOHN D. DON with the result that 'God helped the right, God spared the sin: He brings the proud to shame ; He guards the weak against the strong— Praise to His holy name!' We must confess that we have rarely witnessed anything in our life with more pain than the attitude of Mr. MAASDORF in this miserable trial. It must have been an unedi¬fying spectacle to behold his abortive attempts to demolish evidence that he should have availed himself of in exacting justice for the deceased and his relatives, and we would have admired and loved the Solicitor-General the more, and considered his failure to prosecute PELSER as a pardonable error of judgment, if, on discovering the material evidence that so utterly went against the complainant in this case, he had dared to uphold the dignity of his office by declining to carry on the prosecution to so inglorious an issue. As, however, he has not chosen to do so, it is so much the worse for him. Albeit the fact stands prominently forward that Mr. DON has struck a blow for the rights and liberties of the Native people of this land, the results of which will last for all time. The Monster of bru- tality and lawlessness must have received a blow under which it merely reeled when our friends Mr. SAUL SOLOMON and Mr. DORMER grappled with it in 1879 in the Koegas Tragedy. We venture to say Mr. DON'S herculean struggle with it at Burghersdorp, its very den, has laid it low, and nothing but the united and persistent efforts of the order-loving and law-abiding inhabitants of this country whether Dutch or English assisted by welldisposed Natives will avail to it where it is. The hearty rejoice throughout the country at Mr. Don victory as evidenced by the Pelser clearly shows that the Briton's of fair-play is still there. True, they have been one or two paper have laboured to cheapen this territory, but it is a notorious face Mr. DON has been highly reco- mended by all whose approach of real value. We are now curiously await see what is the next step Government will take towards PelSER, for unless he is brought to tice it will be hard to induced people to admire and believe in anxiety to mete out even-having justice to all irrespective of cape caste, or creed.