28 TlMEHRI. 
The Mother Country, since 1838, enjoyed a national 
legislation, codified, and, though based on the system 
of the Napoleontic codes, nevertheless engrafted on the 
old laws and customs of Holland, adapted to the require- 
ments of the time. The Dutch East Indies had also 
their codes. 
The law of Surinam was still the Roman-Dutch, the 
old law of Holland, and the Roman law. 
In the Mother Country there was certainty, the laws 
being systematically codified. 
In the colony the law was uncertain and in conflict 
with the laws of the Mother Country. There was fur- 
thermore a constant vacillation in the opinion of the 
Courts, based on the authority of cases and decisions, 
blended with the conflicting doctrines of the individual 
authors on the old laws and their endless controversies. 
Indeed, the case was even worse than this. The study 
of the old law of Holland was no longer obligatory, in 
the Series leclionum of the Dutch universities. Members 
of the profession, graduates of the universities, settling 
in the colony, as well as the Judges appointed from the 
Mother Country were no longer sufficiently conversant 
with the laws and the procedure obtaining in the colony. 
The Administration of Justice, of course, did not offer 
the slightest guarantee for the protection of persons, 
their rights and their property. The influx of modern 
law principles, and a growing deference to decisions 
of Dutch Law Courts, based on the modern Dutch 
Codes — a natural result of such a state of things — 
rendered the law uncertain, and contributed to a faulty 
and defective administration of justice, detrimental to 
individuals seeking justice and to the community at 
