“The administration of criminal justice is entrusted to a very small number of English magistrates, organised according to a carefully-devised system of appeal and supervision which represents the experience of a century.  This system is not unattended by evils; but it is absolutely necessary to enable a few hundred civilians to govern a continent.  Persons in such a position must be provided with the plainest instructions as to the nature of their duties.  These instructions, in so far as the administration of criminal justice is concerned, are contained in the Indian Penal Code and the Code of Criminal Procedure.  The Code of Criminal Procedure contains 541 sections, and forms a pamphlet of 210 widely printed octavo pages.  The Penal Code consists of 510 sections.  Pocket editions of these Codes are published, which may be carried about as easily as a pocket Bible; and I doubt whether, even in Scotland, you would find many people who know their Bibles as Indian civilians know their Codes.”

After describing the confusion and complication of the criminal law of our Indian Empire before it was taken in hand by the Commission of 1834, Mr. Stephen proceeds to say: 

“Lord Macaulay’s great work was far too daring and original to be accepted at once.  It was a draft when he left India in 1838.  His successors made remarks on it for twenty-two years.  Those years were filled with wars and rumours of wars.  The Afghan disasters and triumphs, the war in Central India, the wars with the Sikhs, Lord Dalhousie’s annexations, threw law reform into the background, and produced a state of mind not very favourable to it.  Then came the Mutiny, which in its essence was the breakdown of an old system; the renunciation of an attempt to effect an impossible compromise between the Asiatic and the European view of things, legal, military, and administrative.  The effect of the Mutiny on the Statute-book was unmistakable.  The Code of Civil Procedure was enacted in 1859.  The Penal Code was enacted in 1860, and came into operation on the 1st of January 1862.  The credit of passing the Penal Code into law, and of giving to every part of it the improvements which practical skill and technical knowledge could bestow, is due to Sir Barnes Peacock, who held Lord Macaulay’s place during the most anxious years through which the Indian Empire has passed.  The Draft and the Revision are both eminently creditable to their authors; and the result of their successive efforts has been to reproduce in a concise, and even beautiful, form the spirit of the law of England; the most technical, the most clumsy, and the most bewildering of all systems of criminal law; though I think, if its principles are fully understood, it is the most rational.  If anyone doubts this assertion, let him compare the Indian Penal Code with such a book as Mr. Greaves’s edition of Russell on Crimes.  The one subject of homicide, as treated by Mr. Greaves and Russell, is, I should think, twice as long as the whole Penal Code; and it does not contain a tenth part of the matter.”