_5l_., to be paid out of the plunder, he demanded exemplary damages, and
the defendant was lightened of all he could afford to pay. When the
offender was likely to leave the station, the _modus operandi_ was as
follows. The writ of summons was issued. The lawyer strongly recommended
an apology and a promise to defray costs, with the warning that judgment
would go by default against the absentee. If the defendant prudently
'stumped up,' the affair ended; if not, a _capias_ was taken out, and the
law ran its course. A jury was chosen, and I have already told the
results.

At length these vindictive cases became so numerous and so scandalous that
strong measures became necessary. Governor Blackall (1862-66) was brave
enough to issue an order that cases should not be brought into the civil
courts unless complainants could prove that they were men of some
substance. Immense indignation was the result; yet the measure has proved
most beneficial. The negro no longer squares up to you in the suburbs and
dares the 'white niggah' to strike the 'black gen'leman.' He mostly limits
himself to a mild impudence. If you ask a well-dressed black the way to a
house, he may still reply, 'I wonder you dar 'peak me without making
compliment!' The true remedy, however, is still wanting, a 'court of
summary jurisdiction presided over by men of honour and probity.'
[Footnote: _Wanderings in West Africa_, ii. pp. 231-23.]

It cannot be said that the Sá Leonite has suffered from any want of
religious teaching or educational activity. On the contrary, he has had
too much of both.

After the collapse of Portuguese missionary enterprise on the West Coast,
the first attempts to establish Wesleyan Methodism at Sá Leone were made
in 1796, when Dr. Thomas Coke tried and failed. The Nova Scotian colonists