The Colony of Surinam. 35 
system could be, safely abrogated, entirely and without 
reserve. It was even contended in the private delibera- 
tions of the Commission that even if a considerable 
departure from the system on which the Home legisla- 
tion was based should prove advisable, and even if the 
colony and the Commission had not the Home and East 
Indian codes before them, codification remained prac- 
ticable. A revision and concentration of what existed 
and had preceded, in a concise, but systematic and har- 
monious code of law, though a laborious and burthen- 
some work, was not, if properly and efficiently conducted, 
beyond the limits of possibility. The models were every 
where at hand. What was required was the statement, 
not the making, of the law : and the sanction of positive 
law could be given to it by enactment. 
All, consequently, were agreed that the codification 
for the West Indies should be the abrogation of the old 
law-system and the old legislation, and the introduction 
in the colonies of the Home laws, but modified and 
adapted to and brought into harmony with the excep- 
tional position of the colonies, their local exigencies 
and requirements. The Royal Commission of Deer. 
i860, in framing the codes, which were to be submitted 
as the result of her labour to the Government, was there- 
fore as far from servile adoption of the Home legisla- 
tion, or bound by the drafts of the State-Commission 
of 1852, as she was from condemning ex cathedra legal 
principles and law systems of the old law of Holland 
and of colonial law-institutes, which had been tested, 
and had proved beneficial and in accord with the wants 
of the colony, her social and material interests and the 
requirements of her population. The great aim was to 
E 2 
