ABSTRACT
Thomas Macaulay, a leading parliamentary contributor to the 1832 Reform Act and the imperial abolition of slavery and the India Charter Act the following year, left Westminster in 1834 to take up appointment to the Governor General of India’s new Legislative Council where he initiated education reforms, curbed press censorship and the special European privileges in civil proceedings, and drafted his most ambitious law reform, the India Penal Code (IPC). Completed in 1837 and enacted in 1860, the IPC was the first criminal code in the British Empire. Influenced by Jeremy Bentham’s theories of ‘scientific’ legislation and ‘universal’ jurisprudence, Macaulay’s code eliminated the common law, rationalised English criminal legislation and offered a comprehensive, modern presentation of the criminal law. Macaulay’s reforms are nonetheless criticised by postcolonial and nationalist historians (the term Macaulayite is still used to denigrate anglicised Indians) as imperialism renewed under a liberal guise.
