UGANDA JOURNAL.


 It is true that there was a High Court and also an Attorney-General at
 Headquarters, but is was not apparently part of their functions to revise the
 sentences of Commissioners. On one occasion Sanders found the Court very
 helpful. It was at a time when the outcry had been more vociferous than usual,
 and yet it was imperative to make an example of the King of the Ngombi. He
 reported the circumstances to Headquarters, which obligingly sent up a real
 Puisne Judge to conduct the trial and attend the execution.

 Sanders, if asked, would have defended himeslf on two grounds. In the first
place he would have said that he did not adopt such methods by preference,
and that hesitation to act and any delay in awarding punishment would have
been mistaken for weakness by the people he had to deal with, and would have
had fatal consequences. Secondly, that what he did had the implied sanction and
approval of the people of the Territories. Though they might easily forget the
lesson, the majority recognized at the time that a sentence was deserved and
was for the good of the community, and respected the Commissioner for taking
what steps he thought fit to see that his orders as to what was to be done, or
left undone, were implicitly obeyed. It may even be said that a stigma attached
to the criminal.(17) Here is a complaint that Sanders once received:-"Lord,
when I walk in the village, the children mock at me, because my father was
hanged and my brother sits in the Village of Irons".
 Be that as it may, Sanders certainly paid but little attention to a memorandum
on Native Policy, issued at an unknown date, by a mythical Secretary of State
for the Colonies, which ran as follows:-
 "The customs of the country must not be lightly over-ridden or checked.
 Nor should its religious observances, or immemorial practices, be too rudely
 suppressed. The native should be approached gently with arguments and illus-
 trations obvious to his simple mind. Corporal punishment should under
 no circumstances be inflicted save for exceptionally serious crimes, and then
 only by order of the supreme judiciary of the country."
 He did, however, in his general dealings with the problems of government,
employ, if not arguments and illustrations, certainly methods which had an appeal
to the native mind. He made what use he could of his knowledge of native psycho-
logy. He was prepared to take devils, ghosts, ju-jus and witchcraft as a serious factor
in native life, and even to avail himself of the influence they exercised. He once
paid a celebrated witch-doctor 6 to put a curse on anybody who should trans-
gress a certain law that he had made, and it proved a most effective means of
preserving that law inviolate. Again, when he desired to prevent an aggressive
tribe from poaching game in the territory of another, he set up on the boundary
a notice inscribed, "Trespassers will be prosecuted", called the people together
and said, "See, now, O people, I have set here a piece of wood with certain
powerful devil-marks, and he who shall go past it, will become a prey to most
horrible ghosts and ju-jus." This innocent deception also worked.

 (i7) The question of whether or not a stigma attaches to the African criminal in the
eyes of his compatriots, was discussed at a recent lecture given before the Uganda Society,