, but was not yet dead. One absurd little
anecdote in regard to it belongs to this time. Fitzjames had gone to
stay with Froude in a remote corner of Wales; and wishing to refer to
the draft, telegraphed to the Recorder of London: 'Send Homicide Bill.'
The official to whom this message had to be sent at some distance from
the house declined to receive it. If not a coarse practical joke, he
thought it was a request to forward into that peaceful region a wretch
whose nickname was too clearly significant of his bloodthirsty
propensities.

Fitzjames mentions in the same letter to Cunningham that he has just
finished the 'introduction' to his Indian Evidence Act. This subject
brought him further occupation. He had more or less succeeded in making
a convert of Coleridge. 'If this business with Coleridge turns out
right,' he says (October 2), 'I shall have come home in the very nick of
time, for there is obviously going to be a chance in the way of
codification which there has not been these forty years, and which may
never occur again.' Had he remained in India, he might have found the
new viceroy less favourable to his schemes than Lord Mayo had been, and
would have at any rate missed the chance of impressing the English
Government at the right time. On November 29 he writes again to
Cunningham, and expresses his disgust at English methods of dealing with
legislation. He admits that 'too much association with old Carlyle, with
whom I walk most Sundays,' may have made him 'increasingly gloomy.' But
'everything is so loose, so jarring, there is such an utter want of
organisation and government in everything, that I feel sure we shall
have a great smash some day.' A distinguished official has told him--and
he fully believes it--that the Admiralty and the War Office would break
down under a week's hard pressure. He observes in one article of the
time that his father had made the same prophecy before 1847. He often
quotes his father for the saying, 'I am a ministerialist.' Men in
office generally try to do their best, whatever their party. But men in
opposition aim chiefly at thwarting all action, good or bad, and a
parliamentary system gives the advantage to obstruction. Part of his
vexation, he admits, is due to his disgust at the treatment of the
codification question. Coleridge, it appears, had proposed to him
'months ago' that he should be employed in preparing an Evidence Bill.
Difficulties had arisen with Lowe, the Chancel