THE sole purpose of' Mr. MACAULAVS appointment as an Indian

Counsellor, was to frame a new civil and criminal code for our ninety millions of Indian subjects. With this view, he was by law exonerated from all share in the Executive Government, had a salary of 10,000/. a year assigned to him,* and a Commission of four members to assist him, each with 5,000/. a year, and a well-appointed establishment. The results of two years and two months' labours are before us, in the draft of a Penal Code of twenty-six short chapters, embracing in all four hundred and eighty-eight clauses, and comprised in sixty-seven Octavo pages, including illustrations nearly as lung as the laws them- selves. The Indian Code is still in its very infancy, although the Com- mission has been in operation for four years ; for there still remain to be composed—the Civil Code, the Code of Proceedure, the Code of Criminal Instruction, the Commercial Code, the Fiscal Code, and the Military Code. In short, what has been done, is but a sketch of the simplest and easiest part of the work. Very serious doubts may be entertained whether such a work as a uniform code of laws, for so peculiar a people as the Indians, and under our very peculiar circumstances as their lords and conquerors, is at all within the bounds of practicability. Twice over such a code has been executed for great empires in the history of out race. It was executed by Rout:eine, (in a way,) after the various nations com- posing the empire bad been tamed and blended by six centuries of military domination ; when all, or nearly all the subjects of the em- pire, professed one religion ; and when there existed but two cultivated languages—the languages of the majority of the population, one or other of which was very generally spoken by all. Then, the first law. yers and magistrates of the East were engaged in forming the compila- tion : the Emperor himself, instructed in his youth, as GIBBON expresses it, in "the lessons of jurisprudence," took a share in the undertaking ; and the whole was animated by the spirit of TRIBONIAN, the first Minis- ter—a man who, like Bacost, "embraced as his own all the business and knowledge of the age." After all, the work was a mere compilation and digest of old laws, and had not the merit of original composition. The Code and Pandects of JUSTINIAN took but three years and two months to compose ; a shorter time than the Indian Law Commission has been now sitting, which has produced only a penal code of sixty-seven oc- tavo pages. As to the Code Napoleon, it was framed for a people of one religion. The majority of them spoke one language : those that did not, often understood it ; and at all events, being a people of equal civilization and similar manners, the original language of the code would be r adily rendered into theirs, with the most literal and logical accuracy. The civil laws of Naroreost's Code were prepared by a commission con- sisting of four of the most eminent lawyers of France. Every bead of it AVILA then separately discussed by the Legislative Section of the Council of State, NAPOLEON himself taking an active share in the de. bates. It was finally revised by the Tribunate and Legislative body ; and the five branches of the Code took ten years to compose.

Let us now turn to the circumstances under which the Indian Code

Is attempted. The people for whom it is intended are far more nu- merous than the subjects of the Roman or French empires, and Mit- nitely more diversified. There are some twelve millions of Mahome- dans of different sects ; there are seventy millions of Hindoos, divided into some three hundred sects or castes, that will neither eat, drink, nor marry with each other. There are some millions in a state of slavery ; there are some millions that, without being slaves, are no more valued by their fellow men than dogs, and not half so much respected as cows.

* About thirty-five years ago the French captured an Indiaman, and in retaliation of a practice for which we bad ailbrded them the example, published the private correspondence which they had intercepted. The present Lord Cow try, then Mr. lles KY WELLESLEY, had just returned from India, after a short stay of three years. One of his aristocratic friends, writing to an ails. tocratic friend in lndia, says, "Poor Henry Wellesley has just come back, I am told, with 30,0001.—a poor reward for lost time, and, I fear, broken health." We hope there is no ari.tocratic friend of Mr. Mar.‘171„11'S who will have the same regret to express on his account; for he has returned, we are happy to hear, in good health; and if he has not saved 60,0001., has received somewhat more. There are some two millions of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Fire. worshippers, and the like. There are at least thirty native nations speaking as many distinct languages, five of whom are each more nu- merous than the inhebitatits of the kingdom of Scotland, and two of them more numerous than the people of the Three Kingdoms put to. gether. Then there are men of Arabian, Turkish, Persian, Mengel, Malayan, Burman, Peguan, and Chinese blood,—to say nothing of the conquerors, who differ wholly and entirely from their subjects in Ian. guage, manners,1 religion, and state of civilization, and even physical form itself. Such is the heterogeneous population spread over a mil- lion of square miles, and extending from the Equator to the thirty. second degree of north latitude, for whom a uniform code of laws is to be framed.

Turn we now to the parties to whom the gigantic office is consigned of surmounting the apparently insurmountable task of achieving this great promise. The Commission is composed of two English bar- risters who have had no practice, and of three civil officers of the India Coinpany who have had no professional education. They act under the direction of the Council of India ; viz. an English hereditary legislator, a British Lieutenant- General, and three civil officers, who may or may not have pissed their manhood in diplomacy, trade, the mugistracy, or the revenue, but unquestionably have had no legal train- ing. Who is to sanction the project of an Indian code? A corporate, generally self-elected body, of twenty-four respectable gentlemen, some of whom are, or have been, London bankers or London merchants, and some of whom are ex-civil or military Indian servants, without a single individual who even pretends to a knowledge of the theory or practice of jurisprudence. Who controls them ?—An English baronet of literary and social accomplishments, the learned commentator of Childe Harold, who for eighteen years was famed (famed now no longer) for Radical speeches in Covent Garden Market. If the worthy President of the India Board has any assistance at all in this matter, it can only be that of some clerk who pens a paragraph " when he should engross." These are but unpromising auspices for so great and difficult an undertaking. The great majority of the parties concerned know not one word of one language of the many spoken by the people for whom they attempt to legislate ; and they know little or nothing of their laws, manners, or institutions. Over the Law Commission there neither presides nor has presided a Tat IIONIAN, who makes " all the business and knowledge of the age" his own ; no man who, like him, " mitigates envy by the gentleness and affability of his manners." There is no TRONCHET, no PORTALIS, to be found there; and assuredly neither Cannon Row nor Leadenball Street furnish a NAPOLEON.

However problematical the success of the attempt to frame a code of laws for India, the expense is quite certain, and also certain to be enor- mous. We shall attempt to estimate it. The Legislative Councillor, or President of the Law Commission, besides 1,200/. for passage. money, has 10,000/. a year. Each of four members has .000L; and there is a Secretary with 3,000/ ,--which in bare salaries it: 33,000/. per

annum. Then come house-rent, office-rent, clerks, stationery, and printing, which, to be within bounds, we shall only estimate at 7,000/. Here then is a net annual expenditure of 40,000/. Let the expense be first tested by " the Penal Code." The proposition of the mere project—for it is not yet law, and most likely never will be—took, as is stated by the Commissioners themselves, two years and two months.t The project of the Penal Code, then, cost upwards of 86,000?.; every one of its twenty. six chapters cost upwards of 3,300/. a piece ; every octavo page of it near 1,300/. ; every clause of it 177/. ; every line of it, on an average, 26/. ; every word in it a couple of guineas. DRACO'S Code was said to be written in letters of blood : without the least reference to the merits or demerits of Mr. Macautav's, it may be fairly said to have been written in letters of gold. Truth requires, however, that even a more unfavourable view of the expenditure than this should be exhibited. The compilation of the Code Napoleon, under the direction of" a master that counted the moments," took ten years to compile. Considering that in the ease of the Indian Code there is no master to count moments,—consider- ing the greater difficulty of the undertaking, and the small progress hitherto tnatle,—it will not be extravagant to conjecture Out it will take three times as long. Indeed, for that matter, the awful hint is thrown out by the Commissioners themselves, that it is possible their body may be rendered a permanent one. Forty thousand pounds per annum, in a period of thirty years, (a shorter time, by the way, than the double Arcot Commission has lasted,) will make the cost of the Code, without interest, 1,120,000/. But what is paid out of the Treasury is not what is paid by the tax-payer ; and as the Commissioners and their patrons, his Alajesty's Ministers, feign a wonderful anxiety for the latter, we must be a little particular on

this subject. There is not is branch of the Indian revenue collected under a charge of 10 per cent., and there are some in which it is 50, to say nothing of the roguery and plunder of tax collectors, uhich are

particularly active in that part of the word. We may state the amount taken from the Indian people very moderately at 20 per cent.

more than is placed in the Exchequer. At this estimate, the 40,000/.

which the Cominissiun is said to cost, becomes 50,000/. ; SO that if the Commission lasts for thirty years, " the Comic" will cost the Indians,

without interest, a million arida half sterling. But again, at the lowest market rate of interest paid in India, indeed at the legal rate, which is not one half what those who contribute to the taxes pay, capital doubles itself in seven years. t The first year's expense of the Com- mission, accumulating at interest, becomes, two years before the Corn- mission expires, 800,000/. ; the second, a year before it expires, also 800,000/. ; and the third, at its expiration, a similar sum. Without

going one step further in the process, it is enough to see that the precious Code, as in more than one sense it may be called, will cost

2,800,0001, and that before the indiction is completed, the Indians, will virtually have paid many millions ; for which the laws must be good indeed that can compensate them, in their abject and squalid poverty.

-I. The project of NALOLEON'S Civil Code took but a year to prepare, and that portion of the JUSTINIAN laws called the Cade but fourteen months. The legal rate of interest is 12 per cent. ; limit among natives such market rate prevails only in the European towns. In the provinces it a generally 'It per cent., 36 per cent., and 4.3 per cent., occasionally as much as cent, per cent.

In the meanwhile, let those who are theoretically calling out for justice and equality for the Hindoos, look to what they are taking out of their pockets and putting into their own. But we have not yet done with the expenditure, or the difficulties of forming an Indian Code. The Code must be translated, or it will be of no use ; it must be translated into a score of languages, or it will not be of general utility. Each tongue must have a separate Commission for itself; and the Commissioners must not only be scholars, but law- yers. Under such circumstances, they ought to be as well paid as the framers of the laws themselves; for the requisite talent and accomplish- ment—if ever found at all—must be rarer than theirs. To all this mit be added the difficulty, perhaps the impossibility, of rendering the language of our enlightened code of laws into rude dialects, that must be supposed incapable of expressing it, since law has never been written in them, and since, although they have a written character, they have thro literature. Indeed, of the three Asiatic languages existing in India, into which a treatise on jurisprudence could he intelligibly rendered, two, the Arabic and Persian arid foreign, and the third, the Sanserit, a dead one, are as little understood by the commonalty in any part of India as Anglo-Saxon would be in any part of Britain. Our present trans- lation of the Bible, with the aid of nine previous translations into Enzlish, and the assistance of many translations in other European lanorages, demanded the learning and Industry of forty.seven divines, and took three years to accomplish. To translate a long code of laws from English into a score of rude dialects, must be an undertaking of infinitely greater difficulty, and each translation must occupy an infi- nitely longer time. On a future occasion we may probably advert to the character of the Penal Code itself.