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28 ment, the drafting of a code of criminal law, the survey and settlement of the North-West Provinces, became subjects of discussion. But before he could take part in them, it was necessary for Mr. Colvin to serve the prescribed course of apprenticeship, and to gain some experience of the people in the interior of the country.

For a few months, as Assistant to Mr. William Macnaghten, he was subjected to the drudgery of summarizing and of making précis of the interminable Proceedings of which the record of appeal cases in the Company's Chief Court was composed. Pleadings and counterpleadings, precedents and rulings, the substance and the text of exhibits, evidence, oral and documentary, were recited at length in these Proceedings with prolixity dear to the law elsewhere, but precious to the Indian as his own soul. They constituted a narrative and digest of the case from its first inception in some pestilent bamboo brake, to the moment when it was to be finally submitted for the decision of the half-dozen English gentlemen who dozed on tho benches of the Company's Chief Appellate Court. These Proceedings were inscribed on rolls; written, like the roll of Ezekiel, within and without. They stretched, when at full length, over yards. A fellow labourer in that ungrateful acre, Sir Frederick Halliday, noted, not without envy, the instinct with which his colleague seized on material points, rejecting at once what was irrelevant, rapidly bringing out the issues, and grouping round each the arguments bearing