§ MR. DRAGEI beg to ask the First Lord of the Treasury whether Her Majesty's Government have considered the desirability of unifying the criminal law of the whole Empire on the lines of the Indian Criminal Code and the Draft Code prepared for the United Kingdom by the late Mr. Justice Stephen, and of codifying the law with regard to bills of exchange and the law with regard to bankruptcy; and whether Her Majesty's Government will consider the desirability of appointing a Committee on which the great self-governing colonies shall be represented to prepare draft codes with powers similar to those possessed by the Committee on obsolete Acts of Parliament presided over by the late Lord Herschell.
§ THE FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY (Mr. A. J. BALFOUR,) Manchester, E.I am not sufficiently an export on this subject to be able to give my hon. friend any authoritative pronouncement upon it; but it seems to me that the circumstances of the various parts of the Empire are so different that a universal criminal law applicable to all is almost illusory.