66

But, in conclusion, it is well to bear in mind what Blackstone says. of circumstantial evidence: "All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously, for the law holds that it is better that guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer. " And also, as Lord Stowell says: To take presumptions in order to swell an equivocal and ambiguous fact into a criminal fact, would, I take it, be an entire misapplication of the doctrine of presumptions." Mr. Howard O. Sprongle before the annual States' Attorneys' Convention. The Chicago Legal News.

NEW LAW BOOKS.

The Law of Crimes—By Messrs. Ratan Lal, B.A., LL.B., Vakil, High Court, and Dhiraj Lal Keshav Lal Thakor, B.A., of Lincoln's Inn, Barrister-at-Law. Published by the Bombay Law Reporter office, BOMBAY. [PP. LXVIII+913. Price Rs. 10.]

Here is a volume of vast size. The title page calls it. "The Law of Crimes." In this superb guise we find a work of great merit-an able and learned commentary on the Indian Penal Code (Act XLV of 1860). The notes on each section are divided into three main heads-first of all come the general comments, then the pith of judicial decisions, and lastly the substance of rules of practice and pleading.

The comments lucidly explain the cope of each section in the light of the Reports of the framers of the Code and the criticisms and pronouncements of the judicial heads. The case-law bearing on each section is gracefully arranged and grouped. The rulings reported in all the authorised and unauthorised Reports and Journals in India are collected an I condensed under various heads and sub-heads. The rules of practice and procedure indicate briefly what the prosecution must prove an the Judge must observe in trial of a particular case cr offence. We have nothing but hearty praise for the unquestionable merits and usefulness of the gigantic volume of more than one thousand pages now before us. The student who wishes to get a general knowledge of the Indian Criminal Law, the Police Officer and prosecutor who to know the ingredients of any offence and the evidence they ought to collect and produce, the Judge who is anxious to enlighten his views by reference to the opinions of eminent Judges who

care

have gone before him or are now adorning the Indian Bench, or the busy practitioner who stands in need of a comprehensive text-book on the subject for quick reference will find this volume of great value and help in his own line.

The volume deserves, and doubtless will occupy, a place on the shelves of Indian Students, Police Officers, Magistrates, Julges and Lawyers.

Bankruptcy Law.-By Edward Manson, of the Middle Temple, Barrister-at-Law. Sweet and Maxwell, Limited, 3, chancery Lane, London, 1904. [pp. 298 + XXXII. Price 7 s. 6 d.].

This is volume X of the students' series of Law Books published by Messrs. Sweet and Maxwell, Limited, 3, Chancery Lane, London. Its object is to give an outline of the Law of Bankruptcy--the salient points of the system-which shall be intelligible to the student and business man alike. It does not claim to be a comprehensive and exhaustive text-book on the subject; but within its limited scope, it embraces a clear exposition of the law of Bankruptcy. It is well worth the perusal by a stu lent who can ill spare time to go through the bigger volumes on the subject, an 1 at the same time must needs master the rudiments of this branch of the law for his Examination.

The Lawyer's Companion.-BY T. V. Sanjiva Row, 1st grade Pleader Trichinopoly (Madras). Part V.

Part V, of this periodical publication is now before us. It contains the first 26 sections of the Indian Limitation Act (XV of 1877). In our previous reviews on the several parts of the publication we noticed at length the advantages it affords to the In lian Bench and Bar. All we need say now is that Mr. Sanjiva Row is up to his undertaking and every instalment he sends out is an improvement on its predecessor. The part under review contains all that one could desire consistently with the object the author has in view. We wish him success.

THE

Criminal Law Journal

OF

INDIA.

JOURNAL ~

Nos. 2 & 3] FEB. and MARCH 1905. [Vol. II.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF JURISPRUDENCE

DURING THE PAST CENTURY (1).

HE term " jurisprudence" has been used with so many meanings and each maning is so vague, that it is necessary at the outset of any discussion of it to limit in some way the meaning intended to be put upon it. By jurisprudence, as used in the programme of this Congress, I understand to be meant the whole body of law of the European and American nations, regarded as a philosophical system or system3 ; in short, the science of justice, as practised in civilized nations. My own topic, therefore, is to describe the changes in the law or in the understanding of the law in the civilized world during the past century.

So broad a subject cannot, of course, be treated exhaustively, nor can any part of it be examined in detail. My effort will be merely to suggest, in case of a few branches of law where the changes seem to be typical, the course and reason of those changes.

If we compare the condition of the law at the beginning of the century with its present condition we shall gain some idea of the amount of change in the law itself and its administration. In England conservatism and privilege and the dread inspired in the heart of the people by the excesses of the French revolution conspired to

1. Address delivered before the Congress of Arts and Science, at St. Louis, September 20, 1904, in the Division of Jurisprudence.

retain in the law the medieval subtleties and crudities, though the reason of them had been forgotten and the true application of them often mistaken. The criminal law was administered with ferocity tempered by ignorance; all the anomalies and mistakes which have disfigured its logical perfection are traceable to the period just before the beginning of the last century. Criminal procedure was still crude and cruel. The accused could neither testify nor be assisted by counsel legally, death, actually, a small fine or at most transportation, was the punishment, for most serious offences. The amount of crime in proportion to the population was enormously greater than now; there were no preventive measures, no police, not even street lights. The law of torts occupied almost as small a place as it did in the proposed codes; the law of contracts was so unformed that it was not certain whether Lord Mansfield's doctrine that a written commercial agreem'nt needed no consideration, would prevail or not. Business corporations were hardly known; almost the whole field of equity was hidden by a portentous cloud. Lord Eldon had just become chancellor. What the law of England was, such with little difference was the law of our own country. Its application to the complex life of the present was not dreamed of; and it had to be greatly changed before it could be adapted to the needs of to-day. Yet to say, as did Bentham, that it was rotten to the core and incapable of amendment was grotesquely incorrect; to say, as one of his latest disciples did, that it was the laughing-stock of the Continental nations is strangely to misread history. In 1803, with all its imperfections and crudities, it was probably the most just and humane system of law under which human beings were then living.

On the Continent, feudal rights characterized civil law; torture was the basis of the administration of criminal law. And in no country of any size had the people yet obtained what had been given to Eglishmen by their greatest king more than six hundred years before, a common law. Each province throughout southern and western Europe had its custom, each land-owner his own jurisdiction. The rigour of the criminal law had been somewhat modified in France by the legislation of the revolution, and just at the beginning of our century the Civil Code, first of the French Codes, was adopted. These codes, temporarily or permanently impressed on a large part of

Europe outside of France, constituted the beginning of modern legislative reform.

The spirit of the time molds and shapes its law, as it molds and sha; es its manner of thought and the whole current of its life. For law is the effort of a people to express its idea of right; and while right itself cannot change, man's conception of right changes from age to age, as his knowledge grows. The spirit of the age, therefore, affecting as it must man's conception of right, affects the growth both of the common and of the statute law. But the progress toward ideal right is not along a straight line. The storms of ignorance and passion blow strong, and the ship of progress must beat against the wind. Each successive tack brings us nearer the ideal, yet each seems a more or less abrapt departure from the preceding course. The radicals of one period become the conservatives of the next, and are sure that the change is a retrogression ; but the experience of the past a sures us that it is progress.

Two su h changes have com in the last century. The eighteenth had been, on the whole, a self-sufficient century; the leaders of thought were usually content with the world as it was, and their ideal was a classical one. The prophets of individuality were few and little heeled. But at the end of the century, following the American and French revolution, an abrupt change came over the prevailing current of thought throughout the civilized world; and, at the beginning of the period under discussion, the rights of man and of nations became subjects not merely of theoretical discussion but of political action. The age became one of daring speculation. Precedent received scant consideration. The American revolution had established the right of the common people to a voice in the government. The French revolution had swept feudal rights from the civilized world. Although the French Republic was just passing into the French Empire, it was an empire which belonged to the people, and one of which they were proud. The Emperor was the representative and the ilol, not of an aristocracy, but of his peasants and his common soldiers. The dreams of Napoleon himself, to be sure, were not of an individualistic paradise, where each man's personality should have free play and restraint on his inclinations be reduced to the minimum ; but so far as he was able