“A, being exasperated at a passage in a book which is lying on the counter of Z, snatches it up, and tears it to pieces.  A has not committed theft, as he has not acted fraudulently, though he may have committed criminal trespass and mischief.”] In the chapter on manslaughter, the judge is enjoined to treat with lenity an act done in the first anger of a husband or father, provoked by the intolerable outrage of a certain kind of criminal assault.  “Such an assault produced the Sicilian Vespers.  Such an assault called forth the memorable blow of Wat Tyler.”  And, on the question whether the severity of a hurt should be considered in apportioning the punishment, we are reminded of “examples which are universally known.  Harley was laid up more than twenty days by the wound which he received from Guiscard;” while “the scratch which Damien gave to Louis the Fifteenth was so slight that it was followed by no feverish symptoms.”  Such a sanguine estimate of the diffusion of knowledge with regard to the details of ancient crimes could proceed from no pen but that of the writer who endowed schoolboys with the erudition of professors, and the talker who, when he poured forth the stores of his memory, began each of his disquisitions with the phrase, “don’t you remember?”

If it be asked whether or not the Penal Code fulfils the ends for which it was framed, the answer may safely be left to the gratitude of Indian civilians, the younger of whom carry it about in their saddle-bags, and the older in their heads.  The value which it possesses in the eyes of a trained English lawyer may be gathered from the testimony of Macaulay’s eminent successor, Mr. Fitzjames Stephen, who writes of it thus: 

“In order to appreciate the importance of the Penal Code, it must be borne in mind what crime in India is.  Here, in England, order is so thoroughly well established that the crime of the country is hardly more than an annoyance.  In India, if crime is allowed to let to a head, it is capable of destroying the peace and prosperity of whole tracts of country.  The mass of the people in their common moods are gentle, submissive, and disposed to be innocent; but, for that very reason, bold and successful criminals are dangerous in the extreme.  In old days, when they joined in gangs or organised bodies, they soon acquired political importance.  Now, in many parts of India, crime is quite as uncommon as in the least criminal parts of England; and the old high-handed systematised crime has almost entirely disappeared.  This great revolution (for it is nothing less) in the state of society of a whole continent has been brought about by the regular administration of a rational body of criminal law.