Sir G. R. Clerk, 25th May 1852. Not so easily; and it is only in the rainy season that their navigation, by our present class of steaners, could be attempted. 1948. How high is the Beas navigable? 1949. It is liable to inundation? Yes; at first from the melting of the snow. 1950. There is no bridge over it? No. 1951. Is there any bridge over the Sutlej at the upper part? No; bridges of boats have been thrown across it at times; but nothing more. 1952. That must be removed when the floods come? Yes. 1953. In speaking of the Court of Directors, and the patronage which attaches to the Directors, you mentioned the difficulty which would arise from the insufficient amount of the patronage of a Director who had filled a high office in India in doing justice to the claims of those whom he had known in India: do you think that, under the present system of patronage, there are many claims to patronage which are neglected or insufficiently provided for? Testing the distribution of the patronage, by looking at the lists of officers in India, it will be remarked by any one acquainted with India, that a great number are so provided for, and possibly as many as could be consistently with the amount of patronage which it may be just to allot to others. 1954. Do you think that it would have a tendency to facilitate the claims of those who desire advancement in India, if any part of the patronage was taken out of the gift of the Directors and made saleable, so that those parties would be able to obtain the patronage by means of purchase? No; I think it would tend to diminish the number of appointments now available to those on account of long service in India. 1955. Is it not the fact, that those connected with India, who have claims for advancement, would not, generally speaking, be in a position to avail themselves of the patronage by purchase? Certainly; as compared with other classes in this country, their means of success, generally speaking, would be less. 1956. Do you think that any other benefit would arise from making the patronage saleable? Seeing the result of the present system, as we find it in the services of officers. in India, I consider it to be doubtful whether the system would be rendered more efficient than it now is by making the patronage saleable. The Witness is directed to withdraw. Ordered, That this Committee be adjourned till Monday, Die Lunæ, 7° Junii 1852. 1 THE LORD PRIVY SEAL in the Chair. CHARLES HAY CAMERON, Esquire, is called in, and examined 1959. Was the Law Commission in existence at that time? The Law Commission was in a sort of existence at the time when I was in the Council, but it was very nearly extinct; during the greater part of that time there remained only Mr. Daniel Eliott, who is now a member of Council at Madras, who was a member of it, and undertook to act as secretary (the secretary having died, and his place not having been filled up), and myself, who was President; it was reduced to those two; and the vacancies were not filled up, as I think, illegally. 1960. Did you take any proceedings under that Commission when you were so President of it? Yes, we did; the principal work we did at that time, after I became a member of Council, and had other onerous duties as a member of Council devolving upon me, was to review all the criticisms which had been made upon the penal code: the penal code had been sent round to all the higher judicial authorities in India, and an immense body of criticisms had been collected upon it. 1961. That is what is commonly known by the name of Mr. Macaulay's Code? Yes; a vast mass of criticisms had been collected upon it in this way from all the judges of the Supreme Court, and the judges of the Company's Courts of Sudder Adawlut; those criticisms had grown to an utterly unmanageable bulk, which the Council felt themselves incapable of digesting; and upon the motion. of Mr. Millett, who was then in the Council, they were sent to the Law Commission, that is to say, to Mr. Eliott and myself; we read very carefully all those criticisms, answered the arguments that we thought were answerable, and admitted the justice of those which we thought were just arguments, and reported at great length to the Government of India upon those criticisms, ending with a recommendation that the code should be immediately made law. 1962. Can you give the Committee the dates of those respective proceedings. namely, the date of the presentation of the draft of the code, and the date of the report which you made upon it? The penal code was presented on the 14th October 1837; the two reports I have mentioned I have here; the first of the two was dated the 23d July 1846; that was after I became a member of Council; and the second was dated the 24th June 1847; those are the two reports made by the Law Commission, in its reduced state, upon the criticisms which had been made upon Mr. Macaulay's Penal Code by the judicial authorities in India. Evidence on the East India Company's Charter. C. H. Cameron, 7th June 1852. C. H. Cameron, 7th June 1852. 1963. Have those reports been presented to Parliament ? I do not think these have; they ought to be, and will be, no doubt; I have never seen them in the form in which our reports have been laid before Parlia ment. 1964. Where were those printed? These which I hold in my hand were printed in India; I have never seen them in any other form; I shall be happy to leave these copies with the Committee. [The same are delivered in.] 1965. What was done in consequence of those reports? Nothing, that I know of; those reports, I presume, have been sent home; but that I do not know of my own knowledge; I have understood that Sir Edward Ryan recommended to the Board of Control that the whole should be settled here; that the penal code itself, and those reports, and the criticisms upon which those are criticisms, should be referred to some competent body of men here, and decided upon; but that recommendation, I believe, was not adopted, and the code has been sent back again to India, as I understand. 1966. Into what heads have you reduced the code in the form of Acts in the India Legislature ? The penal code is itself, as it came out of Mr. Macaulay's hands, ready for enactment, or very nearly so. 1967. But you suggested some alterations in it? Yes, we suggested some alterations, in consequence of the criticisms which had been made. 1968. Was it not afterwards brought under the consideration of your successor, Mr. Bethune? Yes, I believe it was; I believe that Mr. Bethune made considerable alterations; I believe he omitted the illustrations which I thought were one of the most valuable parts of the code. 1969. Will you explain what you mean by the illustrations ? In the penal code, whenever a proposition was laid down which the Commissioners thought difficult of comprehension (as your Lordships know many abstract propositions are), they added a series of illustrations, showing what it was they meant; they were better than particular cases decided upon the code, and were likely to do much to make it work well, because they were an exposition of the meaning of the general terms of the code given by the Legislature itself, and having, therefore, the same authority as the general propositions had. 1970. At the period of discussing this penal code in India, was the facility or the difficulty of effecting a translation of the code brought under discussion? Yes, it was very much brought under discussion. 1971. In what way was it discussed, and what was the result of such investigation? It used to be very commonly said that it was untranslatable, and that was one of the objections made by some of the judicial authorities. There is a passage upon that subject in the first report of Mr. Eliott and myself upon the code: "Mr. A. D. Campbell is one who has pronounced the code to be absolutely untranslatable;' but the instance he adduces is not very convincing. It will be no easy task,' he says, 'to convey in any of the native dialects the meaning even of No. 24, which merely declares that "to do a thing" denotes omissions as well as acts; for in every language "to do" must stand opposed to its omission.' We can only say that if there were no greater difficulty than this to be overcome, the task of translation would, in our estimation, be an easy work. We do not, however, think that it will be an easy work; on the contrary, we are of opinion, with the authors of the code, that the difficulty of procuring good translations will be great;' but, we concur with them also in believing that the means at the disposal of the Government of India are sufficient to overcome every difficulty' of this nature. Indeed, when we consider what has been donein India by comparatively private means in the way of translating the Scriptures, we are at a loss to understand how there can be a doubt on the subject. We may advert, also, to what has been actually accomplished in the translation of of the Regulations of the several Presidencies, and the Legislative Acts of the Government of India, in which we will venture to say are to be found as great difficulties as any that are to be met with in the code. We would instance in the Acts the Preamble to 5 & 6 Vict. c. 39, recited in Act 20 of 1844; the statute recited in Act 9 of 1842, and section 1 of Act 30 of 1839. In the code of the Regulations for the Presidency of Fort William, not to multiply examples, we would point to the Preamble of Regulation 1 of 1821, and to the important Regulation 7 of 1822. The object, we conceive, should be, by the combined labour of enlightened Europeans and natives,' to make as good a translation as possible into one native language, known more or less all over India, that is to say, the Oordoo, to be used as an approved model in making versions into all the other languages into which it is usual to translate the laws enacted by the Government of India. This, we believe, was the course taken lately in translating the new articles of war." The Oordoo is a higher Hindostanee: the Hindostanee is a language which approaches most nearly to a universal language in India; and the Oordoo is a higher dialect of that language, the language spoken at the native Courts. 1972. Were any practical measures taken in India to ascertain how far the code was or was not translatable ? Upon that recommendation, I believe, no step was taken. 1973. Will you state what steps were next taken? There came out an order from home to make an experiment by translating certain important portions of the penal code; and I was requested to select the portions to be translated. I selected two chapters, one of which I thought one of the most difficult in the whole code, and the other one of the most important; and the translation of them was undertaken by two natives, under the superintendence of Sir Henry Elliot, who is himself a very eminent oriental scholar. The result was a translation and a report from Sir Henry Elliot. The report stated that they had found no difficulty that was not perfectly superable by care and attention; and, also, I think he expressed himself very strongly in favour of the penal code. But the report itself is of course to be had at the India House. 1974. Of what nature were the two chapters which you selected for translation, the one in relation to its difficulty, and the other in relation to its importance? I think the two chapters were the chapter of general exceptions for the sake of difficulty, and the chapter on offences against the person for the sake of the importance of the subject. 1975. Has any subsequent attempt been made in India with respect to ascertaining the practicability of translating the penal code? I have been told very lately by Mr. Millett, that a civil servant in the NorthWestern Provinces has made a complete translation of the whole of the code into Oordoo. 1976. Has that been published for the information of the people? I am not aware that it has. 1977. Have the people of India, for whose government the code is intended, had any opportunity whatever of becoming acquainted with its intended provisions? I think no other opportunity than the publication of it in English. Many of them read English. 1978. Would it not be very advantageous that, previously to determining upon the enactment of a code of that description, it should be submitted for the consideration and opinion of learned men amongst the Hindoos and Mahomedans? Yes, I think it would. 1979. Can you safely venture to legislate for a whole people in a language which they cannot understand, while you give scarcely to an individual among that people an opportunity of knowing beforehand what the law is to be which is to supersede all the old laws and customs of the country? The change is of such a nature, being rather a change of form than of substance, C. H. Cameron, 7th June 1852. C. H. Cameron, 7th June 1852. that I do not think there would be any danger in that. I proposed in my capacity of President of the Council of Education that, supposing the Government should give its sanction to the code, lectures should be established in the Hindoo College and other colleges upon the penal code; and I sent for Mr. Kerr, who was then the principal of the Hindoo College, and consulted him upon it; and he read the code, and said that he felt he should have no difficulty in making his students acquainted with its provisions. 1980. Was that part of the code which was translated, relating to offences against the person, published for the information of the natives, as intended Acts usually are? I am not aware; it was sent home; but I am not aware of anything further that was done with it for anything that I know, it slumbers at the India House. : 1981. You were asked just now, in relation to the penal code,whether any steps had been taken in India to make it known; whether steps were taken advisedly or not for the purpose; was not it the fact that it did become known; did itnot become known in the Bombay Presidency, for instance? I have no doubt that it became known over a very large portion of India. I have no doubt that it became known to a very great number of natives-to all those natives who are able to read English, and who take an interest in such a subject. 1982. Was any application made from the Bombay Government to the Government of India upon the subject of this penal code? Yes, more than one application was made by the Government of Bombay to have this code enacted for that Presidency. I was then in the Council, and I urged it upon the Council, founding myself upon a section of the Charter ActI think it is the 66th section-which says, that when either of the subordinate Governments desire that any law should be passed for them, the Supreme Council shall either pass the law, or shall assign reasons in writing to those Governments for not doing so. I called the attention of my colleagues to that section, and urged that we had no reason for not giving Bombay the code for which they asked. Though my colleagues were not satisfied that it was fit to be enacted for Bengal and for the rest of India, yet they were not prepared to make any objections to it; therefore I thought they ought to have given it to the Government of Bombay, when they asked for it for their Presidency; and I wrote a minute upon that, which minute I have here, and shall be glad to put in as part of my evidence. The same is delivered in, and read, as follows: REPORT of the Law Commission on the Penal Code. I HAVE signed this Report, and fully approve of it; but I think it ought to be known to my colleagues, and to the home authorities, that the great labour which has been bestowed upon it, and the great merit which, in my opinion, it possesses, are Mr. Eliott's, and his only. The Report is entirely his composition; and all the assistance I have rendered him has consisted in discussing with him the various subjects of which it treats, and in occasionally sug gesting additions, retrenchments or corrections. The Report appears to me to show decisively that the chapters of the Penal Code which are examined in it have passed successfully through that ordeal to which they have been very properly subjected-I mean the criticisms of the judges of the Supreme and Sudder Courts-and I have no hesitation in recommending that these chapters should be substituted in the Mofussil for all the existing law on the subject. The Bombay Government has more than once asked for the Penal Code, and, according to the Charter Act, we ought either to give them what they ask for, or to assign reasons for the refusal. If it is thought desirable not at once to change the law throughout the whole of India, Bombay offers itself, by the mouth of its Government, to take the lead in this great improvement. With regard to the Presidencies, I do not at present make any recommendation. I reserve myself until it shall be decided whether we are to go on with two systems of law, whose defects are of an opposite kind, one sort administered by judges who have been trained by jurisprudence, the other by judges who want that preparation; or whether we are to have one system for British India, framed according to the best lights of the present day, and to place at the head of the judicial establishment, which is to administer that system, the men who have had the regular education of professional lawyers, associated in one and the same Court with the men who have had most experience of the laws and usages of the several native races who inhabit this peninsula. When I arrived in this country, and endeavoured to take a survey of the vast field of legislation which Parlia ment |