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

Criminal Law 127law. Stephen thought that " The draft and therevision are both eminently creditable to their authors;and the result of their successive efforts has been toreproduce in a concise and even beautiful form thespirit of the law of England; the most technical,the most clumsy, and the most bewildering of allsystems of criminal law. . . • His draft gives thesubstance of the criminal law of England, down to itsminute working details, in a compass which by comparisonwith the original may be regarded as almostabsurdly small." 22 Lord Bryce thought that " thedeviations from English rules which may be found init do not affect the general proposition that it issubstantially English." 23 Whitley Stokes says "asin the case of the other codes ... its basis is thelaw of England, stript of technicality and localpeculiarities, shortened, simplified, made intelligibleand precise. . • ." 24 Sir Henry Maine has referredto the Code as " that admirable Penal Code whichwas not the least achievement of Lord Macaulay'sgenius and which is undoubtedly destined to servesome day as a model for the criminal law ofEngland." 25 It appears that Macaulay and his colleagues,striving all the time to keep away from theestablished systems of criminal law, and particularlythe English system, so that they might arrive at aresult truly suited to India's needs, travelled unconsciouslybut inevitably along the track of principles22Trevelyan, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 417; Eankin, op. cit., p. 204.23 Studies, Vol. 1, p. 126.21 Anglo-Indian Codes, Vol. I, p. 71.25Village Communities in the East and West, 1871, p. 115.