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SIR CHARLES BliUCE, G.C.M.G., ON 



things legislative activity is being directed to two main objects, 

 *coditication and assimilation. In the term " codification," I 

 include the preliminary or collateral process of consolidation. 

 Consolidation is the term used for the combining of two or 

 more statutes into one. Codification means putting into the 

 form of a statute laws which have ordy been found in text- 

 books or reports of decided cases or partly in such books or 

 reports and partly in statutes, statutory regulations and Orders 

 in Council. 



Concurrently vv'ith, or supplementary to the work of codifi- 

 cation, there is a growing tendency to under ta,ke the work of 

 promoting uniformity of legislation throughout the Empire by 

 assimilation. 



Speaking generally, the true temper of Empire recognizes 

 that the assimilation of the laws of the component units cannot 

 be carried to complete uniformity. Its aim is to find a measure 

 of uniformity consistent with the preservation of their indivi- 

 dual nationality. 



The work of assimilation divides itself naturally into two 

 ■areas of activity, criminal and civil law. In the assimilation 

 of criminal law and procedure, the fundamental principle of the 

 Victorian era has been to substitute for enactments of cruel 

 severity penalties in accordance with the more humane spirit 

 which recognizes that the object of the criminal law is not only 

 the punishment of crime, but the reformation of the criminal 

 <3lass. It is difiicult for us to realize the cruelty of the penal 

 system of England up to a time within the recollection of 

 persons still living. From the Restoration to the death of 

 George III. in 1820, a period of 160 years, no less than 

 187 capital offences were added to the criminal code, while the 

 subsidiary penalties of imprisonment and the lash continued to 

 be applied with indiscriminate severity, even beyond the middle 

 of the nineteenth century. In the assimilation of criminal 

 law and procedure in the Crown Colonies the principles of the 

 Indian Penal Code have found general acceptance, but the 

 process has been slow. In 1869 the wwk of constructing a 

 Penal Code for all the Crown Colonies based on the Indian 

 Penal Code was undertaken by Mr. Eobert S. Wright (after- 

 wards Mr. Justice Wright). After three years of unremitting 

 labour a code was produced and for ten months was under 

 revision by Sir Fitz James Stephen. Conferences and discus- 

 sions followed, leading to a concurrence on almost all the 

 important points of difference; in 1875 the Draft Code was 

 placed in the hands of the Secretary of State. Sir Henry 



