Certain steps, indeed, were immediately taken. Orders were sent out for the release of the Putini people, which order Colonel Durnford had already induced the Natal Government to anticipate; and a further order was notified that the tribe should be compensated for the losses sustained by them during the late expedition. In the case of Langalibalele and his tribe, although it was not thought advisable to reinstate them in their old position, every effort was to be made to mitigate the severity with which they had been treated. A few extracts from the Earl of Carnarvon’s despatch on the subject will best show the tone in which he wrote, and that the Bishop might reasonably feel satisfied that mercy and consideration would be shown to the oppressed people. The Earl of Carnarvon, after reviewing the whole proceeding, comments somewhat severely upon the manner in which the trial had been conducted. On this point he says: “I feel bound to express my opinion that there are several points open to grave observation and regret.” He speaks of the “peculiar and anomalous” constitution of the court, the equally “peculiar” law by which the prisoner was tried, and of “the confusion and unsatisfactory result to which such an anomalous blending of civilised and savage terms and procedure must lead.” He remarks that it was in his judgment “a grave mistake to treat the plea of the prisoner as one of guilty;” and he says, “still more serious, because it involved practical consequences of a very grave nature to the prisoner, was the absence of counsel on his behalf.” Entering into the various charges brought against the prisoner, and the evidence produced to support them, he dismisses the magistrate’s accusation of “general indications, of which, however, it is difficult to give special instance, of impatience of control”; and the Governor and Secretary for Native Affairs comments on the same as unimportant, with the words, “I am bound to say that the evidence does not appear to me fully to support these statements.”[35]