THE PENAL CODE IN TOGOLAND.
One of the charges brought by Sir Hugh Clifford against the German colonial administration is that Germany "as a matter of deliberate policy," had failed in the supreme duty which devolves upon Europe in its relation to non-European peoples, namely in bestowing upon them the "Reign of l,aw" as a substitution for "the capricious wills of innumerable and shifting despots." To these "despots," that is to say the German colonial officials, the accuser avers, the native populations were delivered up.
I.
As a basis for this charge Clifford points to the fact that there existed in Togoland no codified penal law for the natives. This is not to be denied. The German colonial administration did not choose to pursue the path followed by the British colonial administration on the Gold Coast and elsewhere. On the Gold Coast, for instance, the penal code was simply copied from that which was in operation in another colony, namely Nigeria, and in England itself. Germany, on the contrary, had set herself the goal of creating a Penal Code for Natives, which would be based upon the broadest scientific principles, and with due consideration to the best precedents, the prëvailing tribal rights and customs and the experiences of neighbouring colonies. But this was a task which Germany could take up only after the frontiers of the Protectorate which had been acquired
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