Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Description Of The Bantu (continued). The Bantu had a system of common law and perfectly organised tribunals of justice, which, however, were sometimes set aside by the great military tribes. Their laws came down from a time to which even tradition did not reach, and those which related to ordinary matters were so well known to every member of the community that trials were mere investigations into statements and proofs of occurrences. When complicated cases arose, precedents were sought for, antiquaries were referred to, and celebrated jurists even in other tribes were consulted. If all these means of ascertaining the law failed, and the chief before whom the case was being tried was not a man of generally recognised ability, it often happened that no judgment was given, for fear of establishing a faulty precedent. From the decisions of the minor chiefs there was a right of appeal to the head of the tribe. The law held every one accused of crime guilty, unless he could prove himself innocent. It made the head of a family responsible for the conduct of all its branches, the kraal collectively in the same manner for each resident in it, and the clan for each of its sub-divisions. Thus if the skin of a stolen ox was found in a kraal, or if the footmarks of the animal were traced to it, the whole of the residents were liable to be fined. There was no such thing as a man's professing ignorance of his neighbour's doings : the law required him to know all about them, or it made him suffer for neglecting a duty which it held he owed to the community. Every individual was not only in theory but in practice a policeman. A lawsuit among these people was commonly attended by all the men of the kraal where it took place. Nothing was more congenial than to sit and listen... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.