Appendix IV. 191 



Courts was predominantly English. The language was English ; the 

 pleadings, the evidence, the arguments were in English. And for English- 

 trained lawyers, the Roman-Dutch system, with all its virtues, could not 

 fail to be somewhat of an alien system. It had no prestige of national 

 tradition to back it. " The colonists," says the Report of 1914 (p. 20), 

 " have no sentimental affection for any legal legacy of the Batavian 

 Republic of 1803-or the Kingdom of the Netherlands of 1814." It was, 

 moreover, contained in books — some of them between 200 and 300 years 

 old — which were written in a foreign tongue (Latin or Dutch), and were 

 often difficult of access, whether in the original or in translation, l That 

 in such circumstances there should be some lack of sympathy between the 

 spirit of the law to be administered and the administering authorities is 

 hardly matter for surprise. True, there was no want of appreciation of 

 the great merits of the Roman-Dutch law — its lucidity, its simplicity, its 

 "scrupulous reverence for local usage." 2 If there were, as one of the 

 witnesses before the Commission stated, judges who tried " to approxi- 

 mate it to English law as much as possible," there were others who were 

 " particularly wedded to the Roman-Dutch law and always stick out for it." 

 But however genuine the admiration for the great qualities of the " com- 

 mon lavv," and however sincere the endeavour to apply it in a manner 

 conformable to its true spirit, it was almost impossible for English law- 

 yers not to import into their administration and interpretation of the law 

 much of that particular bias of thought and of those habits of reasoning 

 which a schooling in a widely different system had instilled into their 

 minds. To take only one illustration the principle of stare decisis has, 

 as Dr. Bisschop (in the before mentioned article) has reminded us, 3 no 

 place in the Roman-Dutch system ; that is to say, decided cases are 

 never (as with us) sources of legal rules, and, as such, " authoritative " 

 and binding, but are merely examples, or illustrations of the application 

 of legal rules. * This is an important divergence of principle, and though 

 it would doubtless be easy to exaggerate the practical effects of the diver- 

 gence, still it represents a difference of mental attitude which would ren- 

 der it difficult for a lawyer trained in one school readily to accommodate 

 himself to methods of reasoning accepted in the other. 



If, then, the special "conditions" of the Colony were adverse to the 

 healthy growth of the Roman-Dutch law ; if they tended to check its 



1 As long ago as 1S28 the lack of ""food translations of the Dutch authorities" was 

 animadverted on. and the Report of 1014 (p. 28) puts in a plea for securing for the Colony 

 "a set of the leading legal and historico-legal authorities." In British Guiana, moreover, 

 there are no text-books, no written records of judgments of earlier date than 1850, and no 

 reports (Prefessor Lee, op. fit. p, 22). 



2 Report of 1914, p. 10. "Personally, said one barrister witness before the Common law 

 Commission. "I think that the Roman-Dutch law as regards equity is very equitable indeed." 



3 See also the Report of 1914, p, 5, 



4 "Noh exemplis sed legibus iudicandum est." The fact mentioned may account partly 

 for the lack of Law Reports in British Guiana to which reference has already been made. 

 Where decisions have no binding force for the Judges, there is not th6 same incentive for 

 reporting them as there is under our system, 



