Page:Madras journal of literature and science 3rd series 1, July 1864.djvu/25

Rh which were built up into a harmonious edifice by their own recorded decisions, and by the elaborate treatises of the two MacNaghtens, and Sir Thomas Strange. Their learning was sufficiently extensive to enable them to set off the glosses of one commentator against those of another. Their own personal enquiries served to show them how far the law of books corresponded with the living law of the people, and their acquaintance with general jurisprudence enabled them to systematise the whole into a body of law, which can, without an anachronism, be dispensed in the 19th century. They were not merely quarrymen but architects, and it is one of the most valuable results of their labours, that materials, which were within their reach, but which were not employed by them, may generally, and with safety, be disregarded as rubbish.

Another circumstance which tended greatly to direct our Judges, was the ready assistance which they could always command from experienced Natives. The officials of their own Courts, the Native Judges whose decisions came before them in appeal, the Paṇḍits whom they were directed to consult, were all, in a rough general way, acquainted with the state to which the law, by a long process of detrition, had arrived. If pressed by the authority of some ancient text, they disposed of it by simply saying that in the present degenerate age that was no longer law—in other words, that the nation was no longer governed by the maxims of a theocracy. Even while admitting that the particular proceeding in question was contrary to existing law, they got rid of the illegality by holding, that an act, in itself proper, might originate valid rights. In the words of the Roman maxim "Factum valet quod fieri non debuit." And it should be remembered, that this Native assistance was all the more valuable, because the very same men, who, in matters of religious or caste prejudice, would have been