IN A COURT OF JUSTICE. 
497 
punishing the cruelty, or the atrocity of the Euro- 
pean, # no amount of native evidence would be of 
the least avail. Reverse the case, and the sole un- 
supported testimony of a single witness, wall be quite 
sufficient to convict even unto death, as has lately 
been the case in two instances connected with Port 
Lincoln, where the natives have been tried at different 
times for murder, convicted, and two of them hung, 
upon the testimony of one old man, who was the 
only survivor left among the Europeans, but who, 
from the natural state of alarm and confusion in 
which he must have been upon being attacked, and 
from the severe wounds he received, could not have 
been in an advantageous position, for observing, or 
remarking the identity of the actual murderers, 
among natives, who, even under more favourable 
* Governor Hutt remarks, in addressing Lord Glenelg on this 
subject : — “ In furtherance of the truth of these remarks, I 
would request your Lordship particularly to observe, that here 
is oneclass of Her Majesty’s subjects, who are debarred a true 
and fair trial by jury , whose evidence is inadmissible in a court 
of justice, and who consequently may be the victims of any of 
the most outrageous cruelty and violence, and yet be unable , 
from the forms and requirements of the law , to obtain redress, 
and whose quarrels, ending sometimes in bloodshed and death, 
it is unjust, as well as inexpedient, to interfere with. 
“ A jury ought to be composed of a man’s own peers. Euro- 
peans, in the case of a native criminal, cannot either in their 
habits or sympathies be regarded as such, and his countrymen 
are incapable of understanding or taking upon themselves the 
office of juror.” 
2 K 
VOL. II. 
