riumphs,
the war in Central India, the wars with the Sikhs, Lord Dalhousie's
annexations, threw law reform into the background, and produced a state
of mind not very favourable to it. Then came the Mutiny, which in its
essence was the breakdown of an old system; the renunciation of an
attempt to effect an impossible compromise between the Asiatic and the
European view of things, legal, military, and administrative. The effect
of the Mutiny on the Statute-book was unmistakable. The Code of Civil
Procedure was enacted in 1859. The Penal Code was enacted in 1860, and
came into operation on the 1st of January 1862. The credit of passing
the Penal Code into law, and of giving to every part of it the
improvements which practical skill and technical knowledge could bestow,
is due to Sir Barnes Peacock, who held Lord Macaulay's place during the
most anxious years through which the Indian Empire has passed. The Draft
and the Revision are both eminently creditable to their authors; and the
result of their successive efforts has been to reproduce in a concise,
and even beautiful, form the spirit of the law of England; the most
technical, the most clumsy, and the most bewildering of all systems of
criminal law; though I think, if its principles are fully understood, it
is the most rational. If anyone doubts this assertion, let him compare
the Indian Penal Code with such a book as Mr. Greaves's edition of
Russell on Crimes. The one subject of homicide, as treated by Mr.
Greaves and Russell, is, I should think, twice as long as the whole
Penal Code; and it does not contain a tenth part of the matter."

"The point which always has surprised me most in connection with
the Penal Code is, that it proves that Lord Macaulay must have had a
knowledge of English criminal law which, considering how little he had
practised it, may fairly be called extraordinary. [Macaulay's practice
at the bar had been less than little, according to an account which he
gave of it at a public dinner: "My own forensic experience, gentlemen,
has been extremely small; for my only recollection of an achievement
that way is that at quarter sessions I once convicted a boy of stealing
a parcel of cocks and hens."] He must have possessed the gift of going
at once to the very root of the matter, and of sifting the corn from the
chaff to a most unusual degree; for his Draft gives the substance of
the criminal law of England, down to its minute working details, in
a compa