CA. Brit. Judian low commsiion

A

PENAL CODE

PREPARED BY

THE INDIAN LAW COMMISSIONERS,

AND

PUBLISHED BY COMMAND

OF

The Governor General of India

in Council.

CALCUTTA:

PRINTED AT THE BENGAL MILITARY ORPHAN PRESS,

BY G. H. HUTTMANN.

Howard Memorial Lib.

6-11-35

TO THE

RIGHT HON'BLE GEORGE LORD AUCKLAND, C. G. C. B., GOVERNOR GENERAL OF INDIA IN COUNCIL.

MY LORD,

The Penal Code which, according to the orders of Government of the 15th of June 1835, we had the honor to lay before your Lordship in Council on the 2d of May last, has now been printed under our superintendence, and has, as well as the Notes, been carefully revised and corrected by us, while in the Press.

The time which has been employed in framing this body of law will not be thought long by any person who is acquainted with the nature of the labour which such works require, and with the history of other works of the same kind. We should however have been able to lay it before your Lordship in Council many months earlier, but for a succession of unfortunate circumstances against which it was impossible to provide. During a great part of the year 1836, the Commission was rendered almost entirely inefficient by the ill-health of a majority of the Members and we were altogether deprived of the valuable services of our colleague Mr. Cameron, at the very time when those services were most needed.

:

It is hardly necessary for us to intreat your Lordship in Council to examine with candour the work which we now submit to you. To the ignorant and inexperienced the task in which we have been engaged may appear easy and simple. But the members of the Indian Government are doubtless well aware that it is among the most difficult tasks in which the human mind can be employed; that persons placed in circumstances far more favourable than ours have attempted it with very doubtful success; that the best Codes extant, if malignantly criticised, will be found to furnish matter for censure in every page; that the most copious and precise of human languages furnish but a very imperfect machinery to the legislator; that, in a work so extensive and complicated as that on which we have been employed, there will inevitably be, in spite of the most anxious care, some omissions and some inconsistencies; and that we have done as much as could reasonably be expected from us if we have furnished the Government with that which may, by suggestions from experienced and judicious persons, be improved into a good Code.

Your Lordship in Council will be prepared to find in this performance those defects which must necessarily be found in the first portion of a Code. Such is the relation which exists between the different parts of the law, that no part can be brought to perfection while the other parts remain rude. The Penal Code cannot be clear and explicit while the substantive civil law and the law of procedure are dark and confused. While the rights of individuals and the powers of public functionaries are uncertain, it cannot always be certain whether those rights have been attacked, or those powers exceeded.

Your Lordship in Council will perceive that the system of penal law which we propose is not a digest of any existing system, and that no existing

A

119215