NEGRO IDEAS OF LAW AND RIGHT 75 
suffering badly from abdominal dropsy, when he said 
to me ; " Doctor, see that all the water runs off as 
soon as possible, so that I can breathe and get about 
again. My wife has deserted me because my body 
has got so big, and I must go and press for the return 
of the money I paid for her at the wedding.” On 
another occasion a child was brought to me in a most 
miserable condition ; its right leg had an open sore 
along it right up to the hip. ” Why didn’t you come 
before ? ” " Doctor, we couldn’t ; there was a palaver 
to finish.” A palaver means any sort of quarrel 
which is brought up for a legal settlement, and the 
httle ones are discussed in the same detail and with the 
same earnestness as the big ones. A dispute involving 
a single fowl will keep the village elders employed for a 
whole afternoon. Every negro is a law expert. 
The legal side of life is extremely complicated with 
them, because the limits of responsibility are, according 
to our notions, very wide indeed. For a negro’s debts 
the whole of his family, down to the remotest degree 
of relationship, is responsible. Similarly the penalties 
are extraordinarily severe. If a man has used another’s 
canoe illegally for a single day, he must pay the third 
of its value as a fine. 
Together with this unspoilt sense of justice goes 
the fact that the native accepts the punishment as 
something obvious and needing no defence, even when 
it is, according to our notions, much too severe. If he 
did not get punished for an offence, his only conclusion 
would be that his victims were remarkably foolish. 
Yet the lightest sentence, if unjust, rouses him to great 
indignation ; he never forgives it, and he recognises 
the penalty as just only if he is reaUy convicted and 
