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16884.

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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Reference :-

1. c.O. 885

13 PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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MY LORD,

No. 221.

(WESTERN PACIFIC.)

LAW OFFICERS to COLONIAL OFFICE.

WE were honoured with your Lordship's commands, signified in Mr. Bramston's

Royal Courts of Justico, August 20, 1891. letter of the 9th ultimo, stating that he was directed by your Lordship to transmit, for our consideration,—

1. A declaration, signed at Paris, January 26th, 1888, with the regulations annexed. 2. Two despatches, dated 30th August 1890 and 19th November 1890, from Rear- Admiral Lord Charles Scott to Sir John Thurston, High Commissioner for tho Western Pacific, with the High Commissioner's reply to the latter, dated 20th December 1890.

3. A letter from the Admiralty to the Cclonial Office, dated 2nd April 1891, with

enclosures.

4. The Western Pacific Order in Council, 1877.

5. A report from ourselves, dated 11th July 1890.

That it would be seen that two British subjects having been murdered by the natives of an island of the New Hebrides, Captain Davis, of Her Majesty's ship Royalist," received from the Joint Naval Commission "full authority to finish

the case."

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That, acting upon that authority, Captain Davis took the measures detailed in his letter to the Admiral of the 12th of November 1890, but that the High Commissioner doubts whether that officer had any authority or power to hold a quasi-judicial trial of any person he may have made prisoner, or who may have voluntarily surrendered "to him, and thereafter to inflict upon such prisoner the death penalty." he suggested that, in the absence of such authority or power, Captain Davis, although a naval officer, might, as a British subject, be called upon to answer in the High Commissioner's Court for his action in putting those persons to death.

And that

That the Lords of the Admiralty, on the other hand, considered that Captain Davis having got unmistakable evidence of the identity and guilt of the murderers, carried out the execution as an act of war, and were of opinion that he was fully justifled in the course he pursued.

That it might be taken as a fact that Captain Davis possessed all the authority which it was possible for the Joint Naval Commission to confer, and that the circum- stances of the case required that punitive measures should be taken in consequence of the disturbance of peace and good order by the murder of British subjects; and that it seemed clear that if Captain Davis had shelled the island, or had landed a party and come into conflict with the natives, and by so doing had in either case killed various unknown and innocent persons, and had destroyed the property of various other unknown and innocent persons, his action would have been fully justified as an act of

war.

That he adopted, however, the more humane course of securing and identifying the actual murderers, and, after inquiry and proof of their guilt, executing them.

That it had been suggested that those men, whether they had been captured or had surrondered, should be dealt with as taken prisoners of war in civilized warfare.

That it must, however, be remembered that the operations of Her Majesty's ships in those cases, although acts of war, were carried out against savage tribes to whom the usages of civilization wero unknown, and from whom a captured sailor would inevitably receive most barbarous treatment.

That outrages by natives had to be treated as acts of war, for no other means existed for punishing the perpetrators; that there was no court before which they could be tried; that there were no such things as native courts, and that British civil courts had no jurisdiction. ·

That the question raised by the case under consideration seemed really to be whether it was lawful for the Commander of a force engaged in warlike operations undertaken for the purpose of punishing certain specific acts of violence against British subjects, to limit the operations to the personal punishment of the perpetrators of the acts of violence, instead of inflicting a punishment upon the tribe by the promiscuous and indiscriminate destruction of property and possibly of human life as well.

That whether or not Captain Davis had acted strictly within the law, it seemed to your Lordship that morally his action was free from blame, as his object was manifestly

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