administrators, according to the report of the Commission of 1901, "for the first time reduced to a system the administration of famine relief," a policy amply tested and justified in recent years.
This third stage has had another aspect. The native has had to be protected not only against nature, but also against his fellow-men, by the enactment of law. To Asiatics law should be swift and cheap, and their ideal is an Aurungzebe, the emperor who would dispense justice in person to the raggedest of his subjects. But, as a fact, that system worked horribly ill. Besides, the will of the just man cannot decide if shirtings are up to sample, or if the documents in court establish agency, so that discretionary justice is incompatible with the most moderate commercial activity. Business demanded written law, and there were no written laws in India, or indeed in Asia, except the religious ones. These laws of Hinduism and Mohammedanism are, at the best, vague and contradictory, and in some of the branches of jurisprudence contain no rules at all.
Therefore, it was imperative to create law and compose a deuteronomy for India. Since 1860, when the penal code was enacted, we have formulated those codes which, in the words of Sir Henry Maine, "stand against all competition." The penal code itself is, according to Sir James Stephen, "by far the best system of criminal law in the world," and its fellow, the code of criminal procedure, which regulates the daily machinery
