Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: as seemed reasonably applicable in this country. Hindu and Mahometan law not affording any specific rules, or certainly none that were practicable for a mixed population, in a large part of the common affairs of life outside religion and the family, there was only English law to guide them. Thus the law of civil wrongs (among other branches) was practically taken from the common law of England ; just as, if Germans bad been set to do similar work, their basis would have been the Roman law received in modern German practice. We did profess in the mofussil, for a considerable time, to administer Mahometan criminal law. Macaulay's introduction to the first draft of the Penal Code records the difficulties of the attempt. I have said that part of our subject-matter is covered by the Contract Act. But this Act only states in authentic form the results of exactly the same judicial process applied to the law of contract. Hence, we have to do strictly and wholly with Anglo-Indian law. Such principles or results as may be found in Hindu or Mahometan books are matter of pure ornament and curiosity. Authorities The question to what extent English law has English law been received in British India, so as to become a India. law generally binding, is not without illustration from authority. It was much discussed in 1836, in Mayor of Lyons v. East India Co.1 (the case of General Martin's charitable foundation at Luck i 1 Moo. Ind. App. 175 ; 3 St. Tr. N.S. 647. ] chapter{Section 4now). Although the decision itself was limited to holding that certain specific parts of the English jurisdiction of the law of property were not and never had been binding in the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of Bengal, the reasons given, and the arguments which prevailed, involve the conclus...