announces that
he has now examined the code and had never read 'a more confused or
worse-drawn law' in his life. He proceeds to show by various
illustrations that the subjects treated had been mixed up in such a way
as to make the whole unintelligible. He had been obliged to put off the
attempt to understand it till he could get information from outside. He
had, however, prepared a draft of the bill, and a Committee was
appointed to consider it. The measure did not finally come before the
Council until April 16, 1872. He then observes that he has not had the
presumption to introduce 'modifications of his own devising into a
system gradually constructed by the minute care and practical experience
of many successive generations of Indian statesmen.' He has regarded
himself 'less as the author of the bill than as the draftsman and
secretary of the committee by whom all the important working details
have been settled.' He has been in the position of the editor of a
law-book, arranging as well as he could, but not introducing any new
matter. To attempt any sudden changes in so complex a machinery, which
already strains so severely the energies of the small number of
officials employed in working it, would be inevitably to throw the whole
out of gear.

This committee, he says,[112] which included men of the widest Indian
experience, such as Sir G. Campbell, Sir R. Temple, and Sir John
Strachey, met five days in the week and usually sat five hours a day,
and the process continued for 'some months.' They discussed both
substance and style of every section, and examined all the cases decided
by the courts which bore upon the previous code. These discussions were
all carried on by conversations round a table in a private room. 'The
wonderfully minute and exact acquaintance with every detail of the
system' possessed by the civilians 'made an ineffaceable impression'
upon his mind. They knew, 'to a nicety, the history, the origin and
object of every provision in the code.' The discussions were
consequently an 'education not only in the history of British India but
in the history of laws and institutions in general. I do not believe,'
he says, 'that one act of Parliament in fifty is considered with
anything approaching to the care, or discussed with anything approaching
to the mastery of the subject with which Indian Acts are considered and
discussed.' When the committee had reported, the code was passed into
law 'after some littl