A Codified Private Law the One Remedy land page). and the United States. But this position is no longer impregnable, if it ever was. In every country, to dis courage codification, the cry has been raised: "Let well enough alone." It has been heard in more than one century: Rome, Paris, Berlin have listened to it. To "let well enough alone" is a fine principle of conduct only when nothing better is obtainable. If uncertainty, diversity and diffuseness — the "hall-marks" of present American and English law — denote a jurisprudence needing no improvement, then wretched will be the future of Anglo-American law. On the contrary, it is this long continued lamentable con dition itself of American and English law which is responsible for the present movement, now well under way, toward codification. Lord Macaulay, although referring to Anglo-Indian law and the then pressing necessity for its codifica tion, very clearly pointed out the path of future progress for English and Ameri can law when he said: "Our purpose is simply this — uniformity when you can have it; diversity when you must have it; but in all cases certainty."* The idea of a codified jurisprudence as applicable to English and American law did not find a ready reception when first broached; it savored perhaps too much of inferring that English law could be treated for codification purposes like any other law. English and American insularity became prejudiced against codification; it has fiercely assailed codi fication .— and the fighting is not yet over. But while the opponents of codi fication have been reiterating and ful minating that English law cannot and ought not to be codified, an examination of recent events and present tendencies in English law on both sides of the
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Atlantic and elsewhere will reveal the great fact that codification of English law is slowly being accomplished right under their very noses. Already the movement toward codi fication has begun in England and America. Almost at the very outset of the nineteenth century revival of Roman law study, Sheldon Amos published in 1873 his "English Code," in which he laid down the essential principle of Eng lish law codification, namely accurate classification — the rock on which the hopes of David Dudley Field and the movement toward codification started by him were wrecked. What a pity Field did not try to make a thorough use of Livingston's magnificent work so full of accurate classification — the famous Louisiana Code! The glory of first showing to the world that English law can be codified belongs to English jurists. Included in the acts of the Governor-General of British India are the world-famous AngloIndian codes of criminal and civil law, uniform and applicable for all India. These constitute irrefutable facts, proof positive of the possibility of codifying English law. These Indian codes, by their very existence, completely upset the argument that English law wherever found is inherently non-codifiable, and point to the inevitable conclusion that, if Anglo-Indian law can be successfully codified, then Anglo-American, AngloCanadian and British law are also sus ceptible of codification, given the right men to do it — trained jurists familiar not only with their native law but also with the Roman law and the modern codes, and not politicians with a smat tering of legal knowledge. The first Indian code was the cele brated penal code of I860.4 Now there
'See Stokes, Anglo-Indian Codes (reverse of title 'Amended in 1861, 1S70, 1872, 1873, 1882.
