34 TlMEHRI. 
merit, expressed in the Bills of 1851 and 1855, and with 
the views of the States-Commission, that what was 
intended was not to introduce or to adopt, but to adapt 
the Home laws for the colony : a codification for the 
Dutch IV. Indies. A digest or compilation of the undi- 
gesied mass of numerous conflicting and contradictory 
colonial customs, ordinances and resolutions, blended 
with the uncodified Roman-Dutch law, the Commission 
considered a cumbrous and ungrateful work, toilsome 
and laborious, unnecessarily expensive, time-wasting, 
of no practical or salutary result, and leaving the law of 
the land in its chaotic state and antiquated and worn- 
out form. Such compilation or digest was neither 
wished at Home nor desired in the colony. A compila- 
tion or digest, moreover, of the inordinate mass of cases 
and conflicting decisions of Courts, and of controverted 
opinions of law authors — all that, in fact, constituted 
and had brought up the law of the colony, — was also 
fortunately never contemplated, and a compilation of 
customs, ordinances, &c, alone, was considered at all 
events, if advisable at all (and it was not) a half-reform, 
useless, unsatisfactory, and answering no purpose at all. 
The practicability of codification was established be- 
yond controversy. Certainly it was so, in a great 
measure, in the Dutch W. I. Colonies. The Mother 
Country and the Dutch East Indies had codes : they 
were the models for West Indian colonial legislation. 
The actual body of the law of the colony was vague, 
uncertain, dispersed and scattered : it was almost 
bevond reach. It had to be rendered simple, clear, con- 
cise and certain. The Dutch codes were there : no leap 
in the dark was feared : the antiquated colonial law- 
