ned bar, thoroughly imbued with
the traditions of the art, they were in special need of a clear,
intelligible code. By 'boiling down' the English law, and straining off
all the mere technical verbiage, it would be possible to extract a few
common-sense principles and to give their applications to practice in
logical subordination and coherence. That which seems to be a labyrinth
in which it is hopeless to find the way until experience has generated
familiarity with a thousand minute indications at the various turning
points, may be transformed, when the clue is once given, into a plan of
geometrical neatness and simplicity.

This was what Fitzjames endeavoured to do for the Indian law of
evidence. When the draft was circulated the utility of the work was
generally admitted in the reports returned, but some hostile criticisms
were also made. One gentleman, who had himself written upon the subject,
remarked that it had been apparently constructed by going through
'Taylor on Evidence,' and arbitrarily selecting certain portions. To
this Fitzjames replied that every principle, applicable to India,
contained in the 1508 royal octavo pages of Taylor, was contained in the
167 sections of his bill, and that it also disposed fully of every
subject treated in his critic's book. He accounts for the criticism,
however, by pointing out that the limits of the subject had been very
ill defined, and that many extraneous matters belonging properly, for
example, to the law of procedure, had been introduced. A code which
diverges from the general principles into the particular kind of
evidence required in various cases, might spread into every department
of law. Fitzjames, however, partly met his critic by admitting certain
additions of too technical a nature to be mentioned. I may observe that
one source of the intricacy of the English law was avoided. In England,
at that time, the erroneous admission or rejection of a single piece of
evidence might have made it necessary to try the whole Tichborne case
over again. In India this had never been the case, and it was provided
that such errors should not be ground for a new trial unless it were
proved that they had caused a substantial failure of justice. I will
only add that Fitzjames, as before, endeavoured in an 'introduction' to
connect his legal theory with the logical doctrines of Mill. He was
criticised in a pamphlet by Mr. G. C. Whitworth which he admits to be
judicious, and afterwar