hi the Courts of the Madras Presidency. 13 



which were built up into a harmonious edifice by their own 

 recorded decisions, and by the elaborate treatises of the two 

 MacNaghtens, and Sir Thomas Strange. Their learning was 

 sufficiently extensive to enable them to set off the glosses of 

 one commentator against those of another. Their own per- 

 sonal enquiries served to show them how far the law of 

 books corresponded with the living law of the people, and 

 their acquaintance with general jurisprudence enabled them 

 to systematise the whole into a body of law, which can, 

 without an anachronism, be dispensed in the 19th century. 

 They were not merely quarrymen but architects, and it is 

 one of the most valuable results of their labours, that mate- 

 rials, which were within their reach, but which "were not 

 employed by them, may generally, and with safety, be dis- 

 regarded as rubbish. 



Another circumstance which tended greatly to direct our 

 Judges, was the ready assistance which they could always 

 command from experienced Natives. The officials of their 

 own Courts, the Native Judges whose decisions came before 

 them in appeal, the Pandits whom they were directed to 

 consult, were all, in a rough general way, acquainted with 

 the state to which the law, by a long process of detrition, 

 had arrived. If pressed by the authority of some ancient 

 text, they disposed of it by simply saying that in the 

 present degenerate age that was no longer law — in other 

 words, that the nation was no longer governed by the 

 maxims of a theocracy. Even while admitting that the 

 particular proceeding in question was contrary to existing 

 law, they got rid of the illegality by holding, that an act, in 

 itself proper, might originate valid rights. In the words of 

 the Roman maxim " Factum valet quod fieri non debuit." 

 And it should be remembered, that this Native assistance 

 was all the more valuable, because the very same men, who, 

 in matters of religious or caste prejudice, would have been 



