30 TlMEHRI. 
In the renewed and revised Bill of 1855 the Gov- 
ernment laid down, in sec. 72, the principle that "the 
" administration of justice in matters civil, commer- 
" cial and criminal shall be based, as much as shall be 
" found practicable, on the laws and codes in force in 
" the Mother Country." 
New legislation continued to be loudly advocated by 
all parties. Its introduction was however retarded by 
various causes and in particular by the fact that the 
Government had not yet determined in what mode to 
solve the problem of the day, the emancipation of the 
slaves, in her Colonies. 
In 1857, I wrote of this matter in my Dissertation* : — 
The imperative necessity for a reform of the Colonial administrative 
organisation is universally felt ; but it must go hand in hand with the 
introduction of a new legislation. It needs no comment that great 
difficulties will arise and uncertainty in the administration of justice 
will prevail, when a new form of Government which, of necessity, is 
intimately connected with the introduction of a reformed law system, 
will be engrafted on the chaotic and antiquated condition of the present 
Colonial legislation. 
But the ministry, at that time (1857) a ^ the head of 
affairs, was averse to change the colonial constitution ; 
and as the reform of the law had, in its principle, to be 
laid down in the new constitutional law of the colony, 
this wished for reform remained, for the time, referred 
inter pia vota. 
The year 1859 brightened the prospects of the colony. 
The new constitutional law remained still in abeyance, 
* De Heroorming van het RogeringS'stelsel in Nederlandsch W, 
Indie. (Leiden, 1857.) 
