[8] One put to death in 1861 was condemned on a charge of high treason.
[9] As he had previously, in the year 1861, visited Zululand for the purpose of fixing the succession upon the house of Cetshwayo.
[10] Since by our desire he refrained from protecting it by force of arms.
[11] He gives as reasons for his objections: first, that such treaties “involve an admission of equality between the contracting parties,” and therefore “encourage presumption” on the part of the inferior, etc.; secondly, that “men who cannot read are apt to forget or distort the words of a treaty.” A third reason, which does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Shepstone, lies in the ease with which a savage may be deceived as to the contents of a written document, which facility we shall soon largely illustrate in the matter of Boer treaties with the natives.
[12] See Lecky’s “Rationalism in Europe”:—7000 at Trèves; 600 by a single Bishop of Bamberg; 800 in one year, in the bishopric of Wurtzburg; 1000 in the province of Como; 400 at once, at Toulouse; 500 in three months, at Geneva; 48 at Constance; 80 at the little town of Valary in Saxony; 70 in Sweden; and one Christian judge boasted that he himself had been the means of putting to death, in sixteen years, 800 witches!
In Scotland, two centuries ago, but after many centuries of Christianity and civilisation, John Brown, the Ayrshire carrier, was shot, and, within a fortnight, an aged widow and a young maid were tied to stakes in the Solway and drowned by the rising tide, for the crime of neglecting episcopal worship, and going aside into the moor to spend the Sabbath day in prayer and praise.
[13] P. P. [C. 1401] p. 30.
[14] Natives of Basutoland, resident for many years in Natal.
[15] See Field Force Order, 1873.
[16] In the Zulu language the word abantwana (children) is a general one, including both women and children.