The Common Law in India - College of Social Sciences and ...

CHAPTER 1THE RISE OF THE COMMON LAWI. INTRODUCTORYTHE scheme of the Trust under whose auspices I havethe privilege of delivering these lectures speaks of thefurtherance among the Common People of the UnitedKingdom of the knowledge of the Comparative Jurisprudenceof the chief European countries. The themeof these lectures has perhaps a wider scope. We shallundoubtedly be in the realm of comparative jurisprudence;but the comparison will be between thebasic principles which have been the foundation ofthe public and private law of England, and thesystem of laws and administration of justice calledthe Anglo-Indian or the Indo-British system intowhich these basic English principles have in thecourse of over two centuries grown and developed.Beginning with its application in the seventeenthcentury to British subjects in small areas in certainparts of India which were known as the Company'sfactories, the common law of England with its statutorymodifications and the doctrines of the Englishcourts of equity has deeply coloured and influencedthe laws and the system of judicial administration ofa whole sub-continent inhabited by nearly four hundredmillion people. The law and jurisprudence ofthis vast community and its pattern of judicialadministration are in many matters different from1