496 DISADVANTAGEOUS POSITION OF NATIVES 
countrymen — without the power of making adequate defence, 
by speech or witness — you are to stand the pressure of every 
thing that can be alleged against you, and your only chance of 
escape is, not the strength of your own, but the weakness of 
your adversary’s case. Surrounded as your trial was with diffi- 
culties, everything, I believe, was done that could be done to 
place your case in a proper light before the jury. They have 
come to a conclusion satisfactory, no doubt, to their consciences. 
Whatever might be the disadvantages under which you laboured, 
they were convinced, as I am, that you destroyed the life of 
Dillon ; and as there was nothing proved to rebut the pre- 
sumption, of English law, arising from the fact of homicide 
being committed by you, they were constrained to find you guilty 
of murder. There may have been circumstances, if they could 
have been proved, which would have given a different com- 
plexion to the case from that of the dying declaration of the 
deceased, communicated to the Court through the frail memory 
of two witnesses, who varied in their relation of his account of 
the transaction. This declaration, so taken, was to be regarded 
as if taken on oath, face to face with your accuser ; and, although 
you had not the opportunity of being present at it, and of cross- 
examining the dying man, yet by law it was receivable against 
you.” 
In vol. ii. p. 380, Captain Grey says : — 
“ I have been a personal witness to a case in which a native 
was most undeservedly punished, from the circumstance of the 
natives, who were the only persons who could speak as to certain 
exculpatory facts, not being permitted to give their evidence.” 
Under the law lately passed in South Australia, 
the evidence of natives would be receivable in a case 
of this kind, in palliation of the offence. Although 
it is more than questionable how far such evidence 
would weigh against the white man’s oath ; but for 
the purpose of obtaining redress for a wrong, or of 
