lately drawn attention to the
importance of the last; and the new State Trials are in course of
publication. The Selden Society has undertaken some of the antiquarian
researches suggested.

Meanwhile his codification schemes were receiving a fresh impulse. When
preparing the 'Digest,' he reflected that it might be converted into a
penal code. He communicated this view to the Lord Chancellor (Cairns)
and to Sir John Holker (afterwards Lord Justice Holker), then
Attorney-General. He rejoiced for once in securing at last one real
convert. Sir John Holker, he says, appreciated the scheme with
'extraordinary quickness.' On August 2, 1877, he writes that he has just
received instructions from the Lord Chancellor to draw bills for a penal
code, to which he was soon afterwards directed to add a code of criminal
procedure. He set to work, and traversed once more the familiar ground.
The 'Digest,' indeed, only required to be recast to be converted into a
code. The measure was ready in June and was introduced into Parliament
by Sir John Holker in the session of 1878. It was received favourably,
and he reports that the Chancellor and the Solicitor-General, as well as
the Attorney-General, have become 'enthusiastic' in their approbation.
The House of Commons could not spare from more exciting occupations the
time necessary for its discussion. A Commission, however, was appointed,
consisting of Lord Blackburn, Mr. Justice Barry, Lord Justice Lush, and
himself to go into the subject. The Commission sat from November 1878 to
May 1879, and signed a report, written by Fitzjames, on June 12, 1879.
They met daily for over five months, discussed 'every line and nearly
every word of every section,' carefully examined all the authorities and
tested elaborately the completeness of the code. The discussions, I
gather, were not so harmonious as those in the Indian Council, and his
letters show that they sometimes tried his temper. The ultimate bill,
however, did not differ widely from the draft produced by Fitzjames, and
he was glad, he says,[170] that these thorough discussions brought to
light no serious defect in the 'Digest' upon which both draft-codes
were founded. The report was too late for any action to be taken in the
session of 1879. Cockburn wrote some observations, to which Fitzjames
(now a judge) replied in the 'Nineteenth Century' of January 1880. He
was studiously courteous to his critic, with whom he had some agreeable
intercours