_ CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY. 895 
No. 6.—CRIMINAL RESPONSIBILITY: A CHAPTER 
FROM A CRIMINAL CODE. 
By Sir Samuet W. Grirriru, G.C.M.G., M.A., 
Chief Justice of Queensland. 
(Read Wednesday, 12 January, 1898.) 
THERE are, no doubt, reasons for the apparent reluctance of Great 
Britain and the Australian Colonies to attempt to formulate their 
laws in a scientific form—reasons, however, which, good or bad, 
do not seem to operate in the minds of the people of other civil- 
ised States. Probably, one main reason is a conservative instinct, 
which seems to dread a formal change even more than a radical 
alteration in the law, and which is, perhaps, most frequently 
observed in members of the legal profession, without whose assist- 
ance a scientific formulation of the law is usually impracticable. 
Possibly, also, a want of confidence on the part of the lawyers, 
either in themselves or in one another, operates in the same 
direction. There is also the real or supposed difficulty of inducing 
a Legislature to accept a complicated law dealing with subjects 
with which the legislators are unfamiliar. This last difficulty is, 
however, often greater in anticipation than in reality. 
Three branches of the law have lately been reduced to the 
form of a code in Great Britain—the law of Bills of Exchange, 
the law of Partnership, and the law relating to the Sale of Goods ; 
and the English codes on these subjects have been adopted by 
most, if not all, of the Australian Colonies. The law of Defama- 
tion has been codified in Queensland, and the code has been 
adopted by Tasmania ; but the branch of the law which is of 
most general application, and most nearly affects the largest 
number of people, still remains uncodified. 
In 1880 a Bill was introduced in the House of Commons, based 
upon a Draft Code of Criminal Law prepared by Lord Blackburn, 
Mr. Justice Barry, of Ireland, Mr. Justice Lush, and Sir James 
Fitzjames Stephen, but it was not proceeded with; and since then 
nothing seems to have been done in England for the codification 
of the Criminal Law. The Parliament of New Zealand, however, 
in 1893 adopted the English Bill of 1880 with unimportant 
modifications. That Bill was open to serious criticism, and it is, 
perhaps, not to be regretted that it did not become law in 
England. 
There seems to be much misunderstanding as to the nature and 
effect of codification. Chief Justice Cockburn described the work 
of codifying the Criminal Law in the following terms :—‘“ So 
