n, 
these prosecutions; hence the able arguments to which we have 
had the pleasure and advantage of listening; and hence the state- 
ment of these cases for our decision. 
Now it seems to me that the former rights of a slave owner over 
his slave remain in force in the Protectorate, except in so far as 
they have been modified or taken away by the express provisions 
of the Legislature, or any necessary implication. I have not 
arrived at this proposition easily. I have turned it over and over 
in my mind and considered it from every viewpoint suggested by 
Mr. de Hart in his able argument ; T hope and believe it is correct 
and sound. It is therefore incumbent on me to consider, with 
meticulous care, the provisions of the Protectorate Ordinance 1924, 
and the Protectorate Courts Jurisdiction Ordinance 1924, to see if 
I can discover anything which directly, or by necessary implication, 
abrogates a slave owner's former right to re-capture his run-away 
slave. I may here say that the learned Circuit Judge has ex- 
pressly found that none but reasonable force was used in either of 
the two cases now before us, so that the question is fortunately 
not complicated by difficulties that might have arisen had either 
slave suffered bodily injury in the act of re-capture. Mr. de Hart 
relied on sections 6 and 8 of the Protectorate Ordinance 1924, and 
sections 4 and 78 of the Protectorate Courts Jurisdiction Ordinance 
of the same year. I have already expressed my obligation to him 
for his able argument, and feel confident that I need not trouble 
very much about anything on which he did not rely. For a few 
brief moments I have experienced some doubts as to whether he 
should not have placed some reliance on the proviso to section 5 of 
the Protectorate Ordinance, but a careful consideration thereof has 
convinced me that he was right in not doing so. The expression 
“not being repugnant to the law of England *’ clearly refers to 
rights arising out of parental, family, and tribal relations and to 
such rights only. It does not touch the question now before us, 
and I will proceed to an anxious examination of the sections on 
which Mr. de Hart based his main argument. As to section 6 of 
the Protectorate Ordinance and section 4 of the Protectorate Courts 
Jurisdiction Ordinance, these to my mind present no difficulty. 
They bar the slave owners’ legal remedy, it is true; but according 
to a well-known principle of the English Law they do not take 
away his rights. As to section 78 of the latter Ordinance, that is 
a general section which applies the law in force in the Colony to 
matters or causes before the Circuit and District Commissioners’ 
Courts, but only-so far as possible. Assuming that the slave 
owner has a right to re-capture his run-away slave, then it seems 
to me a legal impossibility to hold that an owner who exercises 
that right by the use of only reasonable force, and without doing a 
slave any bodily injury, has committed any offence against such 
laws. Surely the reasonable exercise of an existing civil right can 
aever become a criminal wrong. 
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