Anglo-Saxon Law in Liberia If a woman do anything wrong, she must be punished the same as a man. If a man or woman do anything which these or any other laws say is wrong, the constable, when he is told of it by anybody, must catch the man or woman that has done wrong, and bring them before the judge. If the con stable will not do so, he must pay for the wrong and be punished as the judge says. If he looks good and tries to find the man or woman that did wrong, but cannot find them, he must not be punished. When any man or woman is said to have done any wrong, the judge must hear what everybody says that was there or knew any thing about it, and if he thinks the man or woman has done the wrong, which is called being Guilty, he must punish the man or woman according to the law, but if the judge, after he has heard what everybody who was there has to say, does not think the man or woman guilty, he must let him or her go free. The judge must go by what the people say that were there or knew anything about it. When the section limiting a man to one wife at a time was read to Simleh Ballah, he objected, saying that he had six, and if he had to choose one of them the other five would starve, as nobody else would take them. Consideration of the provision was postponed, and on the following evening, Simleh Ballah re ported that he had "looked his head" (reflected), and was ready to accept the section in a qualified way,— "That be good law for my pickaninny, but not for me. I say to pickaninny, 'you want wife, look good you no hab two wife'; good law for pickaninny, bad law for Simleh Ballah." The proposed law seems to have been objectionable to Simleh Ballah as ex post facto legislation. It would not be at all sensible or fair to take Simleh Ballah and King Free man as fair types of the present public men of Liberia, or to compare King Freeman's code with the laws which the country has adopted, or to see the same motive underlying King Freeman's zeal in emulating the colonists by getting his
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own law from America, and the ready adoption of the American Constitution, with minor alterations, by the republic. Liberia is an English-speaking country, the leaders of which are to be classed as belonging to a high level of Western civilization. Instead of being a bar baric country, it is one of the most promising and advanced of African com munities. Yet it is upon such material as King Freeman and Simleh Ballah that the republic has had to draw largely for its supply of newer citizens among the aborigines of the interior. That the colored citizens of Liberia were unquestionably able to govern themselves under free institutions was the conviction of Commodore Perry, who wrote in 1844:— "Governor Roberts of Liberia and Russworm of Cape Palmas are intelli gent and estimable men, executing their responsible functions with wisdom and dignity, and we have in the example of these two gentlemen irrefragable proof of the capability of colored people to govern themselves." The assimilation of the natives has steadily gone on since the early days of the country, and has made such progress that there is good reason to hope for the spread of Liberian institutions among those tribes of the hinterland which have not yet fully accepted the political and legal institutions of the country. A leading authority on conditions in Liberia, Sir Harry H. Johnston, K. C. B., expresses his opinion as follows: — The best hope of the American colony that has been planted—painfully, but at last suc cessfully—in the coast lands of Liberia, lies in fusion with the fine indigenous African peoples—Fulas, Mandingoes, Vais, Kpwesis, and that remarkable congeries of Kru peoples one tribe of which, the Grebo, may be said to have attained something like stable civiliza tion. The present power of Liberia must not be measured by the fact that the Liberians
