Dean Swift says: “Law is a bottomless pit; it is a cormorant, a harpy that drowns everything.” And believing implicitly in his words, I will not weary my readers with any elaborate disquisition on the legislative enactments, etc., which served to make up the law under which we lived in the early days of the Diamond Fields. Suffice it to say, that to me it seemed a very medley of inconsistency, an olla podrida, a thing of shreds, of patches, making “confusion worse confounded.” Roman, Dutch, English Common. Colonial Statute Law and Proclamations of the local government were blended—no, I should rather say flung together in a fashion so devoid of system as to be absolutely chaotic. The laws of Griqualand West since annexation are now identical with Colonial Laws, with the exception of a few local enactments, but at the time they were sui generis, or rather, if I may be allowed, omnium genorum, homogeneity being remarkable for its entire absence. It speaks well for the contented nature of the diggers, that complaints against this anomalous condition of things were so little rife.

In the early days, a genuine brotherly feeling reigned among the diggers at Colesberg Kopje (Kimberley Mine), and though of course an occasional quarrel would arise, yet as a rule there was universal amity existing.

Such a crime as robbery was, for a long time, scarcely known. The digger left his tent all day with the entrance flaps merely tied down, and returned at night from his work in the mine with no apprehension as to the security of his goods and chattels. In those halcyon days, with scarcely an exception, the natives, who are often unjustly accused of naturally possessing thieving propensities, established the falsehood of the charge by living an honest and laborious life, faithfully carrying out their master’s behests, and never robbing him of a single splint.^[93]

It is my firm conviction, (and it will be admitted that I have had extensive opportunities of judging), that the native laborers, who have been flocking at the rate of 30,000 per annum to the Diamond Fields, are, as a rule, sober, upright, and virtuous before they have been corrupted by the white men, who induce them to steal, or are demoralized by drinking the liquor supplied them by white men. Had it not been for the unscrupulous scoundrels who first introduced illicit diamond buying, and for the almost indiscriminate sale of liquor to natives, they would in all probability be still as honest as at the early period, when, except in trivial assault cases, they were very rarely brought before the Court.

Kimberley, at this time, was without any building set apart as a High Court. When the Judge came from Barkly on circuit, he sat in a large building called the Mutual Hall, which used to serve a variety of purposes, being fitted up for theatrical entertainments, which were frequently given there, while religions services were also held in it from time to time. I remember a trial for murder taking place in this building before Mr. Recorder Barry, the first judge on the Diamond Fields. The alleged facts of the case were briefly as follows: The accused, a man and a woman, had thrown the husband of the latter down the mine—the supposed motive for the crime being that a guilty intrigue which existed between them might be continued without interference. The discovery of certain suspicious circumstances had led to their arrest and committal.

All through the day the Judge and jury had sat hearing the evidence, but very few of the public had attended. As, however, night came on, and it became known that the Judge purposed sitting till the case was concluded, the Hall was quickly crowded with diggers.

Here were men begrimed with dust and coatless as they had hurried there, men who had removed the signs of their daily toil; the floor of the Hall was thronged so that none could move; on the window-sills stood men clinging to each other for support, and to the very girders of the roof a number of adventurous youths had climbed; a veritable sea of faces met the eye, as one gazed around. On the stage sat the Judge surrounded by the tawdry wings. Some were associated in the spectator’s minds with occasions widely different from the background. A glimmering light was shed by a row of flimsy Chinese lanterns suspended above, and on the Judge’s desk were a couple of glittering dips. In front sat the counsel at a table of rough planks, elevated chair high on liquor cases, and behind them were the prisoners mounted on boxes stamped with the battle-axe trade-mark, and bearing the inscription, Henessey’s XXX. As the night wore on, the excitement grew intense; the feelings of the public were dead against the prisoners, perhaps scarce a score in that vast crowd had a doubt as to their guilt or wished them to escape the murderer’s doom. The addresses of the counsel and the charge of the Judge were listened to in breathless silence, and then the wearied jury retired. Apparently some doubt existed in their minds, for the verdict of Not Guilty was returned.

The present High Court in Kimberley is a lofty and extensive building constructed of brick and stone, but for years after the Mutual Hall had been abandoned as a temple of Justice, the Judge or Judges sat in a wretched, tumble down shanty, which is still occupied by the Special Court for the trial of offences against the Diamond Trade Act.

The Resident Magistrate’s Court was the favorite arena of litigants in the early days, as there under Special Proclamations cases involving £500, when there was an acknowledged debt, and £250 in matters of disputed debt or damages, might be tried in a speedy and summary manner eminently satisfactory to those who abhorred the “law’s delays.” This extensive jurisdiction has since been largely reduced, with the result of vastly increased costs and other serious inconveniences to the honest man, who has unfortunately become entangled in the meshes of the law.

The first Recorder of the High Court of Griqualand West, as I have just said, was Mr. now Sir Jacob Dirk Barry, a scholar and jurist of no mean pretensions, and it is not too much to say that at each critical period of the history of the Fields, as the tent burnings and the rebellion already described, it was largely owing to Judge Barry’s firmness and earnestness in the endeavor to maintain obedience to law and order, that consequences which might have proved disastrous in the extreme were happily avoided. After Mr. Barry left there were several judges and acting judges appointed, until, annexation having taken place, a court of three judges was formed, of which Mr. Justice Buchanan was made President.

Of the first Attorney General, Mr. John Cyprian Thompson, I have but little to say, as ill-health almost from the time of his appointment prevented him from taking an active part in public affairs. To the superstitious it would have seemed as if there was a bar upon the Attorney-Generalship; since annexation the Crown Prosecutorship of Griqualand West, Mr. J. C. Thompson’s successor, Mr. S. G. Sheppard,^[94] afterwards Judge and at present Administrator of the Crown Colony of British Bechuanaland, his relations with the other members of the Executive becoming somewhat strained, tendered his resignation. Mr. J. S. Lord, Q. C., who succeeded him, gave up his office in preference to either having to submit to undue interference in the performance of his office or else living in a continual state of “protest;” the next, who was the first Crown Prosecutor, was removed from his post, but hitherto the gentleman at present holding the appointment has maintained his relationship with the Attorney General without friction.

But in no British Colony, I should think, have so many enforced or semi enforced changes taken place among officials as in Griqualand West. In the short space of a decade there were three Resident Magistrates, a Clerk of the Peace, two Commissioners of Police and a Chief of the Detective Department, who were either removed from their respective offices or deemed it advisable to resign.

As my readers may conceive, the Diamond Fields attracted a certain number of barristers, many of whom must have made large sums of money. The fees paid by illicit diamond buyers, when a barrister was engaged for the defence, were, I believe, something enormous. These cases were but a small source of income compared with the long protracted lawsuits that used formerly to arise between various wealthy claim-holders, and subsequently after the claims had been put into companies between these bodies. In the early days there was a court specially established to adjudicate upon claims to unoccupied land situate in Griqualand West, and here several gentlemen of the long robe picked up gold and silver with rapidity. The cases from which the lawyers perhaps derived most emolument was a civil action brought by Isaac Sonnenberg and Edward Eager Hurley against Alfred Ebden, the registered proprietor of the farm on which are situated Kimberley mine and town—and another brought on behalf of the London and South African Exploration Co., Lim., against the government. In the first case Messrs. Sonnenberg and Hurley sought to oust Mr. A. Ebden from his farm on the ground that they had bought a prior and preferent claim, but their enterprise signally failed. In the latter case, the company gained their point and compelled the government to disgorge some portion of the rents and license moneys, which they had improperly received and retained.

Of attorneys there were enough and to spare, and their manner of conducting business, at least in the early days, was decidedly unique. The one grand characteristic that distinguished them was a phenomenal and perennial thirst, and the manful efforts which they made to quench it were worthy of a better cause. Should a clerk omit to dot an “i” or cross a “t,” your attorney would at once propose an adjournment to the nearest canteen while the error was being rectified. Was a case won? So joyful an occasion demanded a copious libation. Was a case lost? A cup of consolation was forthwith quaffed. Was a compromise agreed on? The prospect of renewed amity between the whilom litigants was surely worthy of a foaming bumper.

The “Green Bar”^[95] was the green room of the Judicial Theatre. I have frequently even known adjournments of the Magistrate’s court for the evident if not the avowed purpose of liquidating some abstruse point of law. There was a vast amount of “bluff,” as it is vulgarly termed, and tall talk on the part of the attorneys in those days. I remember upon one occasion, a leading member of the side bar describing a respectable witness as having come into the court with the Bible in his hands and a lie on his lips, while the passages at arms between the practitioners seemed often acrimonious to a degree; but when the court rose, the feuds were forgotten and the contending parties again sped to the “Green Bar,” which possessed for them an absolutely magnetic attraction.

Of the law agents, a genus I think peculiar to South Africa, and in those days, at least, admitted without having to give the most infinitesimal proof of their legal knowledge, I shall not say much. Some were very good men and fair lawyers, but as a rule they consisted of “ne’er do wells,” who having failed in every thing turned to the law as a dernier ressort. The worst of them had no education, no brains, and no money, their sole stock in trade being an absolutely unlimited amount of arrogance which enabled them to prey upon the public. A few men of this class were, until recently, still to be found on the Diamond Fields.

The arrangements for juries were needlessly troublesome. Many classes of persons being exempt, the drawing for juries pressed heavily on the poor digger, who, while compelled to wait day after day in the precincts of the court, was beset with fears, not improbably well grounded, that his “boys” (native laborers) were appropriating to their own use any diamond they might discover. Despite the unpleasantness and loss entailed by serving on a jury, few diggers neglected to answer to their names.

For whatever reason the lawyers were not generally long-lived. I saw a list made out by a legal friend of mine, when in a somewhat gloomy frame of mind the other day, according to which some twenty had died since the opening of the Diamond Fields.

I cannot help here mentioning the sudden end of one of the leaders of the Bar at the time, and a man well known in South Africa. I was an eye-witness of the tragic occurrence. Mr. Advocate Walker, many years prior to the opening of the Diamond Fields, had enjoyed an extensive and lucrative practice in Natal, and at the time of which I am now speaking was conducting the defence of a case in which I was interested. Driving home from my consulting-room on the evening of the day before which the case was expected to be called, I pulled up at Mr. Walker’s house to have a final consultation on some points I thought of importance. I found him smoking his cigar by the fire, looking somewhat unwell, but without anything in his appearance to lead me to anticipate the awful catastrophe impending. I put my questions to him, and for an answer, Mr. W. extending his arms remarked, “Don’t bother, certain to win to-morrow.” As he uttered the last word, he gave a sudden start, bounded from his seat, while from his mouth a jet of bright crimson blood spurted against the wall opposite. For him to-morrow came not. He never spoke again. An aneurism of the heart had given way and in a few seconds he was a corpse. Ever since that melancholy event, I have experienced a sense of no little uneasiness when the probable results of “to-morrow” have been discounted “to-day.” As the poet says “to-morrows cheat us all,” and thus it was in the case of poor Walker.

On mentioning this incident to a friend of mine he drew my attention to the following exquisite lines, which I think are worthy of reproduction here:

I may here, though not strictly connected with this subject, call attention to the strikingly curious names adopted by many Kafirs working on the Diamond Fields, and give some instances of the manner in which they attract public notice. Natives are by no means destitute of a sense of humor,^[96] and very often when they have been working for an employer of passionate disposition, and have been addressed by him in no complimentary terms, they voluntarily retain as their appellation some abusive title, or strong objurgation of which he has made use in the course of his remonstrances. I have not infrequently known a magistrate, on asking a native prisoner his name, to receive the reply “G—d d—mn” or “Bl—dy Fool;” while one unfortunate fellow, when asked the same question in the charge office promptly answered, “Go to H—l,” and it was not until he had been twice or three times knocked down for his apparent insolence, that the Sergeant discovered that the native had simply given a truthful if startling answer to the question put to him. Such names as “Cape Smoke” (i.e., Colonial Brandy), “Pontac” and other alcoholic terms are not uncommon, while “Sixpence” is one of the most favorite names of the natives.

Perhaps one of the most singular illustrations of the eccentric nomenclature to which I allude, and the strangely incongruous circumstances under which instances of it occur, was given in the High Court some two or three years ago. The anecdote serves as an example of how, even in matters of most solemn, nay tragic import, a ludicrous element may be present.

A native named “Brandy and Soda” had been tried for murder and found guilty, if I recollect rightly, before Mr. Justice Buchanan, the Judge President. Awful as is the sentence, and heartless as the man must be who can hear it pronounced unmoved, yet many, by no means devoid of humanity, for a moment smiled, as the Judge, having assumed the black cap, thus addressed the prisoner: “Brandy and Soda, you have been found guilty by an impartial jury of the awful crime of wilful murder, upon the enormity of which it is unnecessary for me to dilate. ‘A life for a life’ is the law for both the black man and the white, and there is no alternative left me but to pronounce on you the sentence of death. The judgment of this court is that you, Brandy and Soda, be hanged by the neck till you are dead, and may,” etc.

In concluding these few remarks relative to the legal profession, I would disclaim any wish to infer that lawyers are not a necessity, far from it, but they are a necessity with which one would fain dispense. I would not wish to imply that the lawyers of Griqualand West are more unreasonably exacting than their brethren in other places, but this observation cannot be regarded as fulsome adulation or extravagant eulogy. It will, however, be evident. I could not advocate so extreme a measure as that proposed by Dick to Cade, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”^[97]