cEAP. v] THE GOVERNOR AND THE LAW 271 
v. Eyre}! which arose out of the Jamaica rising and its 
suppression by the Governor, and by the case of Rex v. 
Tomko. in which in 1907 the Privy Council said :— 
Their lordships are unable to advise his Majesty to grant 
special leave to appeal in this case. The question raised is 
settled by an Act of Natal, and it is not within the power or 
within the province of the Board to discuss or consider the 
policy or expediency or wisdom of an Act, or to do anything 
beyond deciding whether the Act applies. Their Lordships 
are of opinion that the Act applies and they are bound by it 
and must give effect to it. 
It is therefore important that indemnity acts should be 
worded so as to cover all that it is right to cover without 
affording a cover to acts of private malice done under the 
pretence of suppressing a rebellion. The Irish case of Wright 
v. Fitzgerald 3 shows that such an act is not covered by the 
ordinary act of indemnity, and the Colonial Office in 1867 ¢ 
followed this precedent by declining to approve a New Zea- 
land Act which was not limited to an indemnity for acts 
done in good faith in the suppression of the native rising in 
that Colony, but covered all acts done in the suppression 
of the rebellion without qualification. In the case of the 
indemnity acts passed after the Boer war by the Cape and 
Natal the protection given was most carefully worded so as 
to cover only acts done in good faith by the officers concerned 
in repressing the disturbances in those Colonies, nor does it 
seem that there were thus protected any serious cases of 
abuse.5 On the other hand, the Indemnity Act passed by 
Natal in 1906, No. 51, to legalize the acts done by the 
officers and others in the Colony during the rebellion of that 
year, was severely criticized not only in England but in 
South Africa, as a bad departure from precedent in that it 
was provided that all acts done by military or civil officials 
should have been deemed to have been done in good faith, 
while the acts of non-officials were legalized only if either 
1 4Q.B.225; 6Q.B. 1. 2 [1907] A. C. 461. 
* 27 St. Tr. 759. ¢ New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, i. 1003. 
5 Cape Acts Nos. 4 and 10 of 1902; cf. No. 35 of 1904: Natal, No.22 of 1902,