Page images
PDF
EPUB

AND WHEREAS the British South Africa Company has asked that the amount due to it for its administrative expenditure should be determined at the earliest possible moment, and submitted on November 21, 1918, and on July 7, 1919, provisional statements (copies whereof are appended hereto) of net expenditure by the Company in connection with Southern Rhodesia on account of the Crown, up to the date of the Company's latest balancesheet, that is to say, March 31, 1918.

NOW THEREFORE I, Viscount Milner, P.C., G.C.B., G.C.M.G., His Majesty's Secretary of State for the Colonies,

APPOINT YOU,

The Right Honourable Viscount Cave, P.C.,

The Right Honourable Lord Chalmers, P.C., G.C.B.,
Sir William Barclay Peat,

to be a Commission (whereof Viscount Cave shall be the Chairman) to examine the said statements of the British South Africa Company and to investigate the records and accounts of the Company in London and in Rhodesia, and to make all such inquiries as may seem to you desirable and to take an account of what would be due to the Company in accordance with the said Report of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, if the administration of Southern Rhodesia by the Company had been determined on March 31, 1918.

I appoint Hugh Nimmo Tait, Esq., to be the Secretary to the Commission.-July 17, 1919.

Captain ORMSBY-GORE: Are the terms of reference confined to assessing the actual amount, or are they going to survey the whole question of the administration of the Company and whether or not its expenditure has been extravagant?

Lieut.-Colonel AMERY: The terms of the reference are "to examine the statements of the British South Africa Company and to investigate the records and accounts of the Company in London and in Rhodesia and to make all such inquiries as may seem to be desirable."

July 29.

Mr. ADAMSON asked the Lord Privy Seal whether His Majesty's Government have agreed to accept as binding the recommendations of Lord Cave's Commission as to the amount of money to be paid to the Chartered Company; and whether he will bear in mind the promise made that His Majesty's Government would not commit themselves to any payment without the sanction of the House of Commons ?

The UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES: The answer to both parts of the question is in the affirmative.

RHODESIA (LAND-INQUIRY COSTS).

August 7.

Colonel WEDGWOOD asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Rhodesian Legislative Council passed a resolution whereby the costs of preparing the land inquiry for the inhabitants and people of Rhodesia were to be defrayed from administrative revenue; and whether he can state the amount of the expenditure incurred by the white settlers and natives, respectively?

The UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Lieut.-Colonel Amery) A resolution was passed by the Legislative Council of Southern Rhodesia in 1914 requesting the Administration to provide a sum of £5,000 to defray the cost of presenting the case of the inhabitants and people of Rhodesia to the Privy Council; but the total cost of the case presented by the elected members amounted ultimately, I understand, to about £10,000. The costs incurred by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society in respect of the case presented by them on behalf of certain natives amounted, I believe, to about £7,000.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Am I to understand from that answer that the costs incurred by the white settlers have been paid out of administrative revenue, and the costs incurred by those who represented the natives have not been so met ?

Lieut.-Colonel AMERY: I have explained it. Up to £5,000 the costs incurred by the elected members on behalf of the inhabitants of Rhodesia have, so far, been met out of moneys provided; but the whole question as to administrative revenue will come before Lord Cave's Commission. The costs of the case presented by the independent body, the Aborigines Protection Society, have been paid by themselves.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Although the natives contribute to this administrative revenue not one penny-piece has been used to protect their interests, which have been left to a private body of people?

Lieut.-Colonel AMERY: Well, sir, I cannot accept that for a moment. The fact that the elected members are elected in the main by the white settlers, and that only a small number of natives have the franchise at the moment, does not necessarily mean that if the issue had gone in favour of the view of the elected members the interests of the natives would have been neglected. These interests are, under Order in Council, fully safeguarded by the Crown; that position existed before, and obtains to-day.

Mr. MACQUISTEN: Why are the natives not getting their costs paid; are they not the original inhabitants of the country?

Lieut.-Colonel AMERY: It is not a question of costs to the natives. A philanthropic society, being of opinion, for its own reasons, that the interests of the natives were not sufficiently safeguarded, not even by the Crown, introduced their own case in Court-which is their own affair-and they have paid for it. Even so, I think the interests of the natives are, and will be, fully safeguarded by the Crown.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: Is it not the fact that the Aborigines Protection Society put their case before the Court, and provided it with the facts on which their judgment was based?

Lieut.-Colonel AMERY: No, sir, I think the Society offered to put their case, and the Court was quite willing to hear it.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: That is not so.

Mr. MACQUISTEN: Seeing that the work of the Aborigines Protection Society served a very useful purpose in bringing the facts before the Court, should they not have had some of the costs they incurred?

Lieut.-Colonel AMERY: I am only trying to make the position clear. The interests of the natives are protected and safeguarded by the Crown: in which respect they are as well off as before hearing the advice of the Aborigines Protection Society.

Mr. MACQUISTEN: Why, then, was not the evidence of the Aborigines Protection Society ruled out of Court?

Mr. SPEAKER: Any further questions had better be put down.

Colonel WEDGWOOD asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the British South Africa Company has refused to allow the Legislative Council of Rhodesia to pay the expenses incurred by the natives in preparing evidence for the Rhodesian land inquiry, and has in a written statement declared that such costs should be paid by the philanthropic public; whether this attitude has at any time received the approval of His Majesty's Government; and, if not, whether a proposal would be sympathetically considered to submit to Lord Cave's Commission the reasons which exist for making the costs of the natives, like those of other parties to the inquiry, a public charge?

Lieut.-Colonel AMERY: I am aware that the British South Africa Company have refused to ask the Legislative Council of Southern Rhodesia to vote the costs incurred by the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society in presenting the case to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on behalf of certain natives. The case was taken up by the Society entirely on its own responsibility, and neither the present Secretary of State nor his predecessor has felt able to take any action in the matter. I understand

that Lord Cave's Commission has agreed to hear the Society upon such matters as may come within the terms of reference to the Commission.

Colonel WEDGWOOD: May I ask whether it is a fact that the Legislative Council of Rhodesia wished to pay these expenses, and is it also a fact that the Commission, that represented the natives, backed up the British South Africa Company in refusing to allow this offer to be made?

Lieut.-Colonel AMERY: I do not understand that the Legislative Council did ask that.

LORD CAVE'S COMMISSION.

August II.

Mr. ADAMSON asked the Lord Privy Seal whether he is aware that the Royal Commission to inquire into the claim of the British South Africa Chartered Company is holding its meetings to receive evidence in private; and whether, in view of the public interest in this matter, he will represent to the Commission the necessity for holding their meetings in public?

The UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE COLONIES (Lieut.-Colonel Amery) I understand that none of the meetings at which evidence is taken or counsel is heard are private.

GERMAN COLONIES.

July 9.

Mr. J. DAVISON asked the Prime Minister whether, as in the case of the Draft Covenant for the League of Nations, the draft mandates for the late German Colonies will be published before being finally approved by the League ?

Mr. BONAR LAW: The substance of the Mandate is already contained in Article twenty-two of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

THE GAMBIA.

July 31.

Mr. J. W. WILSON asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies whether the Commission of Inquiry appointed by the Governor of the Gambia colony in January last to investigate certain disturbances and complaints affecting the administration of the Upper Saloum district of the protectorate has completed its investigation; and whether its report has yet been issued.

Lieut.-Colonel AMERY: The Secretary of State has received the report referred to, and has taken such action upon it as appeared necessary.

Miscarriage of Justice in British East Africa.

IN reference to the case of the trial, for murder of a native, of two white men in the East Africa Protectorate, about which correspondence with the Colonial Office was published in our April issue, we have received the following further letter from the Department :—

SIR,

DOWNING STREET,
July 4, 1919.

With reference to the letter from this Department of the 7th of May I am directed by Viscount Milner to inform you that he has now received from the Governor of the East Africa Protectorate a report on the trial of Mr. H. E. Watts and Mr. C. S. L. Betschart.

2. The facts of the trial are as follows:

Mr. Watts was committed for trial on a charge of voluntarily causing grievous hurt under section 325 of the Indian Penal Code; he was found guilty of the lesser offence of voluntarily causing hurt, for which the maximum penalty is imprisonment for one year or a fine not exceeding Rico0/or both; and he was sentenced to pay a fine of RIOCO/- or to undergo six months' rigorous imprisonment. Mr. Betschart was committed for trial on a charge of murder under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code; he was found guilty of voluntarily causing hurt; and he was bound over in a sum of R1500/- (with two sureties of R750/- each) to be of good conduct for twelve months.

3. It appears that in the case of Mr. Watts, who was charged with causing grievous hurt, the main question was whether the testimony of the native witnesses could be accepted in its entirety; and from questions put to the jury by the judge it seems clear that the jury accepted the evidence of the flogging of the native Matunga at Mr. Watts' house, but that they did not accept the evidence of subsequent floggings and immersion in the river.

4. The second accused was committed on the charge of murder by causing the death of the Native Matunga by strangulation; but with regard to this charge and the lesser charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, the Prosecution was confronted by a difficulty which in the Governor's opinion was insurmountable. The Indian Sub-Assistant Surgeon who examined the body of the deceased was precise on the point that the cause of death was strangulation, the usual symptoms of death by strangulation being found on the body; but there was no evidence that the accused did any act which caused or could have contributed to death by strangulation. In these circumstances the jury refused to convict either of murder or of culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

« PreviousContinue »