Privy Council as ultimate Court of Appeal, and the others set aside. Moreover the Hindu law of Wills has been in some points supplemented by English legislation, and certain customs repugnant to European ideas, such as the self-immolation of the widow on the husband's funeral pyre, have been abolished. And in those parts of law which, though regulated by local custom, were not religious, some improvements have been effected. The rights of the agricultural tenant have been placed on a more secure basis. Forest rights have been ascertained and defined, partly no doubt for the sake of the pecuniary interests which the Government claims in them, and which the peasantry do not always admit. But no attempt has been made to Anglify these branches of law as a whole.

On the other hand, the law applicable to Europeans only has been scarcely (if at all) affected by native law. It remains exactly what it is in England, except in so far as the circumstances of India have called for special statutes.

The third question is as to the contents of those parts of the law which are common to Europeans and Natives, that is to say, the parts dealt by the codifying Acts already enumerated. Here English law has decisively prevailed. It has prevailed not only because it would be impossible to subject Europeans to rules emanating from a different and a lower civilization, but also because native custom did not supply the requisite materials. Englishmen had nothing to learn from natives as respects procedure or evidence. The native mercantile customs did not constitute a system even of the general principles of contract, much less had those principles been worked out in their details. Accordingly

the Contract Code is substantially English, and where it differs from the result of English cases, the differences are due, not to the influence of native ideas or native usage, but to the views of those who prepared the Code, and who, thinking the English case-law susceptible of improvement, diverged from it here and there just as they might have diverged had they been preparing a Code to be enacted for England. There are, however, some points in which the Penal Code shows itself to be a system intended for India. The right of self-defence is expressed in wider terms than would be used in England, for Macaulay conceived that the slackness of the native in protecting himself by force made it desirable to depart a little in this respect from the English rules. Offences such as dacoity (brigandage by robber bands), attempts to bribe judges or witnesses, the use of torture by policemen, kidnapping, the offering of insult or injury to sacred places, have been dealt with more fully and specifically than would be necessary in a Criminal Code for England. Adultery has, conformably to the ideas of the East, been made a subject for criminal proceedings. Nevertheless these, and other similar, deviations from English rules which may be found in the Codes enacted for Europeans and natives alike, do not affect the general proposition that the codes are substantially English. The conquerors have given their law to the conquered. When the conquered had a law of their own which this legislation has effaced, the law of the conquerors was better. Where they had one too imperfect to suffice for a growing civilization, the law of the conquerors was inevitable.

VII. THE Working oF THE INDIAN CODES.

Another question needs to be answered. It has a twofold interest, because the answer not only affects the judgement to be passed on the course which the English Government in India has followed, but also conveys either warning or encouragement to England herself. This question is-How have these Indian Codes worked in practice? Have they improved the administration of justice? Have they given satisfaction to the people? Have they made it easier to know the law, to apply the law, to amend the law where it proves faulty?

When I travelled in India in 1888-9 I obtained opinions on these points from many persons competent to speak. There was a good deal of difference of view, but the general result seemed to be as follows. I take the four most important codifying Acts, as to which it was most easy to obtain profitable criticisms.

The two Procedure Codes, Civil and Criminal, were very generally approved. They were not originally creative work, but were produced by consolidating and simplifying a mass of existing statutes and regulations, which had become unwieldy and confused. Order was evoked out of chaos, a result which, though beneficial everywhere, was especially useful in the minor Courts, whose judges had less learning and experience than those of the five High Courts at Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Allahabad and Lahore.

The Penal Code was universally approved; and it deserves the praise bestowed on it, for it is one of the noblest monuments of Macaulay's genius. To appre

ciate its merits, one must remember how much, when prepared in 1834, it was above the level of the English criminal law of that time. The subject is eminently fit to be stated in a series of positive propositions, and so far as India was concerned, it had rested mainly upon statutes and not upon common law. It has been dealt with in a scientific, but also a practical commonsense way: and the result is a body of rules which are comprehensible and concise. To have these on their desks has been an immense advantage for magistrates in the country districts, many of whom have had but a scanty legal training. It has also been claimed for this Code that under it crime has enormously diminished: but how much of the diminution is due to the application of a clear and just system of rules, how much to the more efficient police administration, is a question on which I cannot venture to pronounce1.

No similar commendation was bestowed on the Evidence Code. Much of it was condemned as being too metaphysical, yet deficient in subtlety. Much was deemed superfluous, and because superfluous, possibly perplexing. Yet even those who criticized its drafting admitted that it might possibly be serviceable to untrained magistrates and practitioners, and I have myself heard some of these untrained men declare that they did find it helpful. They are a class relatively larger in India than in England.

It was with regard to the merits of the Contract Code that the widest difference of opinion existed. Any one

1 The merits of this Code are discussed in an interesting and suggestive manner by Mr. H. Speyer in an article entitled Le Droit Pénal Anglo-indien, which appeared in the Revue de l'Université de Bruxelles in April, 1900.

who reads it can see that its workmanship is defective. It is neither exact nor subtle, and its language is often far from lucid. Every one agreed that Sir J. F. Stephen (afterwards Mr. Justice Stephen), who put it into the shape in which it was passed during his term of office as Legal Member of Council, and was also the author of the Evidence Act, was a man of great industry, much intellectual force, and warm zeal for codification. But his capacity for the work of drafting was deemed not equal to his fondness for it. He did not shine either in fineness of discrimination or in delicacy of expression. Indian critics, besides noting these facts, went on to observe that in country places four-fifths of the provisions of the Contract Act were superfluous, while those which were operative sometimes unduly fettered the discretion of the magistrate or judge, entangling him in technicalities, and preventing him from meting out that substantial justice which is what the rural suitor needs. The judge cannot disregard the Act, because if the case is appealed, the Court above, which has only the notes of the evidence before it, and does not hear the witnesses, is bound to enforce the provisions of the law. In a country like India, law ought not to be too rigid: nor ought rights to be stiffened up so strictly as they are by this Contract Act. Creditors had already, through the iron regularity with which the British Courts enforce judgements by execution, obtained far more power over debtors than they possessed in the old days, and more than the benevolence of the English administrator approves. The Contract Act increases this power still further. This particular criticism does not reflect upon the technical merits of the Act in itself.