THE STATE AS SHYLOCK.

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Effectual Relief Bills must not only deal with the action of the Civil Procedure Code, but must modify the relentless rigour of the revenue system, and allow more discretion to the local authorities in the collection of the land-tax. It is the State

that plays the part of a plundering army, while it throws all the blame on the camp followers, who take the opportunity for petty pillage which is so freely offered them. It is right to see that justice is done between the usurer and his victim, but the State ought itself to set the example. A Liberal ministry which has brought forward a Bill to restrain Irish landlords in evictions for rent, might consistently urge the Indian Government to show more leniency in its exactions of land-revenue.

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CODIFICATION.

CHAPTER IV.

IN spite of the admitted defects of our judicial machinery and the disastrous failure of some of our codes, the task of law-making is allowed to proceed as merrily as ever. In 1875, when Lord Salisbury with his usual self-assurance* pressed the Indian Government to sanction the resumption of the process of codification which had been lately suspended, Lord Northbrook's Council recorded an emphatic protest against introducing new laws-the inevitable effect of codification in a country like India-faster than it could bear. The despatch went on as follows: 'The people of this country do not accept change readily. They have no constitutional machinery for making their sentiments known, so that we may be long in finding out how they are affected by changes in laws; but they are more or less unsettled by every change, and if the change happens to be an important one the unsettlement is lasting. It is therefore more prudent not to make many changes simultaneously, because the inevitable disturbances resulting from

* Despatch of Secretary of State for India, published in Gazette of India, February 15, 1879.

A STATESMAN AND A BIGOT.

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each may be too much in the aggregate, and also because it is desirable to know something of the working of one before bringing on another. Indeed, in our judgment, India is not the country into which any large body of law, either actually or virtually new, can prudently be introduced except slowly and cautiously.'

They also pointed out the great labour caused to the small staff of officials who carry on the business of the country in having to learn new laws, and expressed their opinion that the consolidation and simplification of existing laws was the most desirable work for the legislative department for some time to come. They concluded by saying that the Civil Procedure Code then in hand. would involve several controversies of considerable difficulty, and that codification might wait for a more convenient season.

But with the appearance on the scene of Lord Lytton as Viceroy and Mr. Whitley Stokes as Legal Member of Council, Lord Salisbury returned to the charge. In a despatch, dated January 20,

* It is well known that Lord Macaulay's famous Criminal Code, after its final revision by Sir Barnes Peacock, has hardly required a single amendment. The same care was taken with Sir J. Stephen's Criminal Procedure and Evidence Code. But the Civil Procedure Code seems to have been hurried on, and is now undergoing a thorough revision. But as if these changes were not enough to worry the hard-worked judicial staff, the legislative department has set to work on substantive law, and Mr. Whitley Stokes is desirous also of remodelling the Criminal Procedure Code. See Appendix X.

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BEGGING THE QUESTION. •

1876, the Secretary of State, with his characteristic obliviousness of anybody else's opinions except his own, asserts that 'all objections to codification are altogether outweighed by the vast practical usefulness which has recommended this method to most of the nations of Europe.' And in view of the

fact that an Indian Law Commission had been appointed in India in 1833, and in England in 1853 and 1861, he 'is of opinion that the completion of a Code of Law is an accepted policy which cannot now be abandoned without great detriment to the people and serious discredit to the Indian Government. He forbears therefore (this is very characteristic of the noble Marquis's Indian despatches) from dwelling on the reasons which might be adduced in favour of that policy if its continuance were now under discussion.'

On the utterly unstatesmanlike tone of this despatch, its absolute disregard for the enormous difference between India and Europe, its complete contentment with the light of inner consciousness, it is needless to comment. Nobody expects anything else from a Marquis whom Providence has sent into the world to continue the interrupted policy of the Elizabethan age. But that any Viceroy should give his consent to the initiation of a gigantic social revolution is almost beyond belief. The only explanation is that foreign affairs became too urgent for Lord Lytton to keep in check an aspiring barrister, and that Mr. Whitley Stokes is responsible for the wonderful despatch which was

A LEGAL CRUSADE.

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sent in reply to Lord Salisbury's peremptory orders.

The scheme sketched out is as follows: The chapter of the Indian Civil Code treating of contract is to be supplemented by codes on the following subjects: (a) sale of immovable property, mortgages, exchanges, leases; (b) insurance; (c) carriers; (d) negotiable instruments; (e) bottomry, respondentia, and the other liens on movables, with certain exceptions. Then are to follow codes on certain personal relations, such as those between master and servant, parent and child, on trusts, servitudes or easements, boundaries, alluvion and diluvion. Lastly, torts are to be dealt with. It is significantly stated, by the way, that 'such a scheme would perhaps enable us to make some urgently needed social reforms, without the risk of exciting popular opposition, and that it would assuredly diffuse among the people of India a more accurate knowledge of their rights and duties than they will attain if their law is left in the present state' (i.e. partially codified, but mostly left to the interpretation of the Local Courts, guided by local usage, with the assistance of analogies from English law).

The light in which this project of speculative radicalism is viewed by practical statesmen of unusually wide experience in Indian matters, may be seen in a minute recorded by Lord Northbrook's Council, consisting of Lord Napier, Sir A. Hobhouse, Sir W. Muir, Sir A. Eden, Sir A. Arbuthnot, and Sir A. Clarke.