First. By his own bodily power.

Secondly. By disposing any substance in such a manner that the motion, or change, or cessation of motion, takes place without any further effort on his part, or on the part of any other person.

Thirdly. By inducing any animal to move, to change its motion or to cease its motion."

Then comes this definition of "criminal force." "Whoever intentionally uses force to any person without that person's consent, in order to the committing of any offence, or intending by the use of such force to cause, or knowing it to be likely that by the use of such force he will cause, injury, fear, or annoyances to the person to whom the force is used," is said to "use criminal force" to that other. A subsequent section erects the user of criminal force into an offence.

Although the English criminal law forms the basis of the Indian Penal Code, there are a great many differences between the two. Thus, in the Penal Code there is no division of crimes into felonies and misdemeanours. The term accessory is not found in the code; nor is conspiracy an offence under that name; but knowingly harbouring or screening an offender is an offence, and abetting an offence is also an offence, whether that abetment is by instigation, by aid, or by conspiracy. Again, the term, "manslaughter" does not appear in the code, yet in lieu thereof we have "culpable homicide," which may or may not amount to murder. Here it may be remarked, that care has been taken to frame the sections relating to culpable homicide so as to exclude anything like the unjustifiable rule of the English law, that the accidental causing of death in the course of committing, or attempting to commit, a felony is murder. In this case the penal code is less stringent than the English law. In most cases, however, it is more stringent. A forcible example of this is afforded in the Indian offence of Cheating, which is thus defined: "Whoever by deceiving any person fraudu lently or dishonestly induces the person so deceived to deliver any property to any person, or to consent that any person shall retain any property, or intentionally induces the person so deceived to do, or omit to do, anything which he would not do or omit if he were not so deceived, and which act or omission causes or is likely to cause damage or harm to that person in body, mind, reputation, or property, is said to cheat. Explanation.-A dishonest concealment of facts is a deception within the meaning of this section." This, it may be ob served, renders criminal many transactions which in England are treated simply as breaches of contract, and redressible only by civil proceedings. One more point of difference may noted. In England, only written or printed defamatory matter can be the subject of criminal proceedings, whereas under

the Penal Code the crime of “defamation " includes oral as well as printed or written matter. For ten years the Penal Code continued unaltered; but in 1870 was passed an Amendment Act, which, in addition to altering some of the sections which practice had shown to be defective, created three or four new offences. Of these the most important are those which were deemed necessary owing to the increase of treasonable conspiracies, and of attempts to excite disaffection to the English Government. Accordingly, the Amendment Act made it an offence to conspire to wage war against the Queen, or to deprive the Queen of the sovereignty of British India, or to overawe by criminal force the Government of India, or any local government; and also to excite, or attempt to excite in any way, feelings of disaffection to the British Indian Government, with the proviso, that making comments on Government measures calculated to excite disapprobation, is not an offence, provided snch disapprobation is compatible with a disposition to obey the Government, and to support it against unlawful attempts to subvert or resist it. The proviso is a wonderful effort of legislative wisdom, leaving, as it does, to the court the almost impossible task of drawing the line between that disapprobation which is legal and that which is not.

II.--THE METAPHYSICAL AND POSITIVE METHODS IN JURISPRUDENCE.*

HE subject to which your attention is invited possesses an interest for the student of literature or science as well as of law. I propose to examine whether the philosophy of law has been affected by the great intellectual revolution of the sixteenth century, of which Lord Bacon may be taken as the exponent. Great as is the contrast between the rich harvest of truth gathered during the past two hundred years, and all that was done during the preceding ten centuries, it is not more striking than the wide interval that separates the thought of the middle ages from the thought of the present day. The revolution in astronomy, led by Copernicus, is a great landmark in the history of science; it parts off, on the one side,

Being the Introductory Lecture to the Faculty of Arts and Laws University College, London. By Professor W. A. HUNTER. October 2, 1872.

the men who took this little globe to be the centre of the universe, and who estimated everything with reference to that centre, from those who do not look even upon the sun as a fixed point in the universal movement; but this vast difference in the standpoint of the ancients and the moderns is only one example of the revolution that has affected the spirit of speculation in every department of thought. Has this remarkable change penetrated the domain of law? Have the spirit and the philosophy of legislation been charged with the new life? Has jurisprudence thrown off its garment of metaphysical cobwebs, and clothed itself with the sober garb of true science?

There is an accidental but singular propriety in the development of this theme within the walls of University College. The great representative of the modern spirit, the man who, to political and legal science, was all, and more than all, that Lord Bacon was to physical science, the man "who found law a jargon, and left it a science," was one whose earliest friends and disciples were among the founders of this institution. All that was mortal of the greatest jurist of this century, Jeremy Bentham, is now enshrined within these walls. If Bentham ought to be taken as the apostle of legal reform, the Roman jurists afford an equally happy instance of the old jurisprudence -the system that Bentham set himself with heart and soul to destroy. We may describe the method of the Roman jurisconsults as metaphysical, Bentham's as positive or scientific. Jurisprudence, therefore, like the rest of the sciences, has undergone an intellectual transmutation; it dwelt for ages in the cloud-land of metaphysics; it has now been brought to the earth and planted on a solid foundation by Jeremy Bentham.

The characteristic of the metaphysical method is that it proceeds in the explanation of nature by assigning as causes to events, not the physical antecedents of those events, but some abstraction. One of the favourite abstractions employed for a great variety of purposes was nature. Why does water rise in a pump when a vacuum is made? Because, said the metaphysical method, nature abhors a vacuum. This explanation, although really no explanation at all, but a disguised re-statement of the very fact to be explained, held its ground until Torricelli made his famous experiments. It was then found, by actual trial, that in a tube of water nature abhorred a vacuum up to about thirty-two feet, but no farther. The imaginary cause, the abhorrence of nature for a vacuum, was thus found no longer to answer; and the real cause, a physical fact, the weight of the atmosphere, took its place. The metaphysical gave way to the scientific explanation.

Although the abstraction "nature" was thus given up in the explanation of pumps, it has with many held its ground to

this day in the explanation of law. The Roman jurisconsults borrowed the theory of a law of nature from the Greeks, through the Stoics, and from them it has descended as a heritage of modern jurists. This law of nature was made to serve two purposes: to explain historically how law originated, and to be a standard according to which the laws of any particular nation should be improved and corrected. The defects of law were explained as arising from a failure to copy nature. Now, if we ask what this law of nature is, we can find no better answer than before. It is an empty name. Nothing can be taken out of it, but what is first put into it. It may perhaps echo the voices addressed to it, but none the less is it a dumb oracle. How then, the question may fairly be asked, should an abstraction so barren as the law of nature not merely have retained its sway for ages, but have given birth to numerous and valuable principles of law? Was it not the law of nature that Grotius invoked, when, after the close of the desolating thirty years' war, he called upon the nations of Europe to observe among themselves those rules of justice that distinguish civilization from anarchy and savagery? And was not this single service enough to raise the law of nature to a pinnacle of fame? Was it not the same spell that Rousseau invoked to shatter the edifice of the French monarchical oppression? How, then, could the law of nature, if it be indeed barren, give forth such fruits? In considering these facts, we are indeed perplexed, as when looking on a juggler who draws endless stores of ribbon from his mouth, or vomits forth volumes of flame; we feel sure that the thing is not what it seems, although we may be unable to explain how it seems to be what it is. To explain how the law of nature has accomplished the feat, it is necessary to go far back, and to trace it to its source.

To three ancient peoples are we indebted for the main factors of our social system. To the Greeks, we owe our science and philosophy; to the Jews, our religion; to the Romans, our law. It is true, that our science is not the science of the Greeks; our religion, not the religion of the Jews; our law, not the law of Rome; but, nevertheless, it was their evolution that enabled ours to proceed. The special value of Roman law is in showing us how a people, with the genius for order possessed by the Romans, evolved out of a rude customary law a majestic system, capable of welding together millions of people in the unity of a single state. Moreover, this system of law was not a mere mechanical extension, so to speak, of their early customs, but possessed new ideas and principles, which had this invaluable peculiarity, that they were consistent with economic progress. A single

but instructive example of their contribution to social pro

gress, is the last will or testament. The power of leaving one's property on one's death, a privilege without which we can scarcely imagine the possibility of great industrial enterprises, is, according to our ideas, so inherent in the very notion of property, that we suppose it to be coeval with the first institution of property. Yet the will was a discovery of the Romans; from them it has passed into modern law; and, but for their assistance, we might still have been without the least conception of a will. It might have transcended the inventive powers of our ancestors. The face of society would have been altogether changed by the absence of this single discovery.

In the laws of the Twelve Tables, the most ancient written law of Rome, we find the scanty rules characteristic of a primitive and patriarchal state of society. Free labour is unknown; the community is divided into two groups: a small one, consisting of heads of families: and a large one, containing all the rest of the population, wives, children, and slaves, under their despotic authority. As each family supplied its own wants, with only occasional assistance from its neighbours, commerce was very restricted. The law of property consisted of some precise and tedious ceremonies; the law of contract was scanty; and the Roman testament was just recognised. As the Romans proceeded in the subjugation of Italy, they had to deal with vanquished communities, whose customs, differing often in detail, resembled their own in rudeness. Later on, Rome became a centre to which many strangers resorted for occasional business, or for employment. In the earliest times, the Romans probably strengthened themselves, by admitting new tribes to the privileges of citizenship; the necessity of keeping up their numbers reconciled them to the admission of foreign elements. But a time came when Rome closed its gates, and henceforth the aliens that came to dwell in it, unless specially privileged, were excluded from the rights of citizenship, and refused the protection of law. A proud and jealous guild, such as the Romans formed, a brotherhood-of one blood, real or feigned-refused to share its laws with those who did not belong to the old Roman stock. Aliens were ignored by the law; they could not enjoy a legal title to property; they could not make contracts. At length, however, the existence of a large body of aliens in Rome, outlaws among a lawabiding people, became too great an inconvenience and danger to be overlooked. The remedy adopted was characteristic of a people at once proud of their achievements and tenacious of their privileges. Instead of admitting aliens to the privileges of their law, excluding them only from political rights, they appointed a judge (the Prætor Peregrinus) specially to administer justice where an alien was concerned.