ndoo law is that it
is vain to think of extracting certainty from the books of the jurist.
The consequence is that in practice the decisions of the tribunals are
altogether arbitrary. What is administered is not law, but a kind of
rude and capricious equity. I asked an able and excellent judge lately
returned from India how one of our Zillah Courts would decide
several legal questions of great importance, questions not involving
considerations of religion or of caste, mere questions of commercial
law. He told me that it was a mere lottery. He knew how he should
himself decide them. But he knew nothing more. I asked a most
distinguished civil servant of the Company, with reference to the clause
in this Bill on the subject of slavery, whether at present, if a dancing
girl ran away from her master, the judge would force her to go back.
"Some judges," he said, "send a girl back. Others set her at liberty.
The whole is a mere matter of chance. Everything depends on the temper
of the individual judge."

Even in this country we have had complaints of judge-made law; even in
this country, where the standard of morality is higher than in almost
any other part of the world; where, during several generations, not
one depositary of our legal traditions has incurred the suspicion of
personal corruption; where there are popular institutions; where every
decision is watched by a shrewd and learned audience; where there is an
intelligent and observant public; where every remarkable case is fully
reported in a hundred newspapers; where, in short, there is everything
which can mitigate the evils of such a system. But judge-made law, where
there is an absolute government and a lax morality, where there is no
bar and no public, is a curse and a scandal not to be endured. It is
time that the magistrate should know what law he is to administer, that
the subject should know under what law he is to live. We do not mean
that all the people of India should live under the same law: far from
it: there is not a word in the bill, there was not a word in my right
honourable friend's speech, susceptible of such an interpretation.
We know how desirable that object is; but we also know that it is
unattainable. We know that respect must be paid to feelings generated by
differences of religion, of nation, and of caste. Much, I am persuaded,
may be done to assimilate the different systems of law without wounding
those feelings. But, whether we assimilate t