plicity preclude any attempt to comprehend them within a uniform Civil Code. The only practicable course, therefore, was to frame Acts embodying broad principles of jurisprudence, providing, so to speak, the lines upon which social evolution might be assisted. The precise scope and operation of these emancipating Acts cannot be here explained; though the Indian Succession Act may be taken as an illustration of the process. It codified the law relating to the effect of death or marriage upon successors to property, and to testamentary bequest; but it does not apply to Hindus, Mohammedans, or to others who are subject to their own personal laws; it provides a definite civil status for those classes of the population whom the novel rites and peculiar doctrines, which are continually disintegrating orthodox Hinduism, or the softening of manners and intellectual elevation, may have separated from their original sects or communities.
Other Acts, such as that for the remarriage of converts to Christianity, embodied the principle that change of religion involved no loss of ordinary civil rights. The Acts dealing with Evidence and Contract reduced to concise and explicit form a mass of law that the courts had previously been obliged to extract from text-books, reports, and conflicting rulings, and the procedure of all courts of civil jurisdiction was determined by comprehensive enactments. In short, the aim and outcome of the legislation during this period was to simplify and summarize the administration of justice, and to promote by successive measures the general principle
