§ SIR HUGH CAIRNSasked the Secretary of State for India, Whether the Legislative Council of India have passed an Act enabling District and other Judges in 204 India to enforce specific performance of personal contracts by sentencing the Defendants in actions on such contracts to terms of imprisonment; and whether he will lay the Act upon the table?
§ SIR CHARLES WOODsaid, that no such Act had passed the Legislative Council, and consequently he could not lay it upon the table of the House. In a proposed measure for the enactment of a code of civil procedure, as it had first been circulated, there were clauses of the nature indicated by the question of the hon. and learned Gentleman; but it was not now intended to submit those clauses in the form in which they then stood to the Council. No object, therefore, would be attained by laying them upon the table. Before the proposed code could come into operation, it must be sent here for the approval of the home authorities; a long time, therefore, must elapse before it could take effect.