KAFIR WAR. (Hansard, 5 July 1837)

§ Mr. W. Gladstone

said, that he rose to lay on the table a petition from freeholders and other residents of the Cape of Good Hope, praying that a Commission might be appointed to investigate upon the spot, charges which had been made in this country, seriously and grievously as they considered, affecting their character, relatively to their intercourse, for a long period of time, with the Aboriginal tribes. The language of the petition was strong, stronger than in ordinary cases he would wish to be the means of placing before the House, and only excusable under the peculiar circumstances of these colonists, smarting from the severe inflictions they had sustained by the Kafir War, which took place in the winter of 1834. The petition was aimed at the conduct of her Majesty's Government. He did not feel it necessary to identify himself with the allegations it contained, because he did not feel that he had in his possession all the data necessary to enable him to form a judgment upon the course which had been pursued. The hon. Member stated the substance of the petition. In conclusion, they prayed, not correctly in point of form, that the House would appoint a Commission; but he might say, that a Commission should be appointed, to examine, upon the spot, into the truth of the facts alleged concerning the past, and into the policy which it would be desirable to pursue for the future. He thought they had grounds for this prayer, as regarded the Government, but still more in consequence of Parliamentary proceedings, which had been taken, but which were not alluded to in the petition. A Committee had been appointed in that House, to consider our relations with the aboriginal tribes in and bordering on British settlements. That Committee had presented evidence equaling in bulk the labours of any of its predecessors, and a Report, he believed, of 1800 unrivalled length. It contained an elaborate historical disquisition on the conduct of the colonists towards the Kafirs and other tribes, and it pronounced a very heavy censure upon the colonists. Now, considering the difficulty of investigations relating to so distant a country, and the increase of that difficulty where the inquiring body was dependent, to a great extent, upon a casual testimony, not having the means of official and confidential communication with the colony, he thought it a very unfit tribunal, without intimating any suspicion of its fairness, to adjudicate upon matters whereon great excitement prevailed, and character was intimately concerned. The more so in this case, because the Chairman had sent to the Cape for a witness, perhaps more than any other person mixed and embroiled in those excitements; and the Committee had adopted that act of the Chairman, and made it its own. Thus an impression had inevitably gone forth, that the Committee was not impartial, and, assuming the character of an advocate, had become disqualified for executing the functions of a judge. Those were serious grounds of exception by the colonists to the course taken at home, and tended to sustain their prayer, in which, without attempting to evade a full exposure of the facts, they urged that that inquiry should be conducted on the spot, for the very purpose that it might be ample and accurate. For his own part, he believed that it would have been quite practicable to frame, prospectively, a satisfactory system of intercourse with the Kafirs, without dwelling upon the unhappy occurrences of the past; but as a different view had been taken, and as sentence had been pronounced upon them, he thought they had a claim, in fairness, to a local inquiry, and he earnestly recommended their prayer to the favourable consideration of the House.