But while Kapeni had a duty to perform in giving up the transgressor, whose duty was it to punish him? Kumlomba asserted that it was for him to deal with the case. As this man was my instructor in the native language at the time, I was thrown much into his society, and I heard him declare that he wanted to take the whole responsibility. Besides he had carried out a capital sentence long before. It might be true that in the eyes of Englishmen these negroes looked bad dispensers of equity. Some of the Portuguese also said that it was not right for the Mission to allow savages to figure as administrators of justice. Still the natives had dispensed their own laws for hundreds of years. But at Blantyre was there not a Colony as well as a Mission, and had not the Colony power to punish? Undoubtedly the Blantyre settlement was established on this principle, and when Dr. Macklin wrote to the Convener of the Committee giving an account of the occurrence, and stating his determination to give judgment on the murderer, the latter at once agreed with the Doctor’s reasons, remarking that the native mind would accord with the doom decreed, while he ever afterwards defended the execution on the supposition that it was the duty of the Colony to carry it out. But against this position it was argued that it was not lawful for British subjects to punish transgressors without the authority of the Government. This objection was found to be serious, though it did not occur to any worker in Africa. Even the promoters of the settlement, many of whom were legal men, seem to have overlooked this difficulty though they had by them books on statute law of which there were none in the desert. But though I for one never thought of statute law, I had once read carefully the old Acts of the Scottish General Assembly, and though I had no books of authority by me I was aware that clergymen had been censured or deposed for acting as magistrates, and I mentioned to the others that I was bound by laws or precedents like these. At the same time I held strong views to the effect that no clergyman ought to act in civil matters at all. In every colony I could think of, such duties fell to laymen. So far as I could understand the case, there were two civil authorities both asserting their right to punish the offender, one being the natives and the other the Blantyre colony.