administration of justice. This recommendation appears at first sight rational and easy of compliance, but it would be perhaps one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish, for so long as the administration of justice is with the Supreme Court, it must, more or less be subject to the delays, uncertainties and technicalities incidental to the system pursued in the Courts in England. To render even to British subjects intelligible would be a work of no ordinary difficulty to Chinese; it would be altogether useless to attempt it, but I do not think that a new code is required, for it is not our Laws to which the inhabitants generally, Chinese and others, if they could express themselves would object, but to the delays, fictions and technicalities with which those Laws are administered. That a short abstract of crimes and their punishments might be drawn up and published is true enough, but the Chinese as well as all other nations know tolerably well what is morally wrong, and that murders, thefts, acts of violence and the like, are punishable by the Laws of all nations.
Confirmed. 18th May last
AB.
While on this subject I would beg to remind Your Lordship that by this mail an Ordinance will arrive at the Colonial Office for approval, which provides for the decision and punishment of the lesser and more prevalent crimes in a speedy and summary manner. By this Ordinance certain minor crimes heretofore only determinable by the Supreme Court are made cognizable by Court of Petty Sessions at which the Stipendiary Magistrate is to preside, having as his coadjutors any of the Magistrates of the settlement who may be fit to attend; and to render this Court perfectly independent...