2. _The English Law in force in India though not made expressly for India._--A considerable portion of the law of England, both statute law and common law, was introduced into India by the assumption that when courts of justice were established in India, to be presided over by English judges, it followed that they were to administer English law as it stood at the time of the granting of the charter so far as it was applicable. There has been considerable doubt as to when this assumption ceased, but the date generally assigned for this purpose is 1726. It only applied, however, to courts established before this date under the direct authority of the crown, that is to the charter courts of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, and at a very early date (21 Geo. III. c. 70) the jurisdiction of these courts was limited, practically, to the inhabitants of the presidency towns and to suitors of European origin residing elsewhere. Moreover, even in the presidency towns, these courts were directed to apply to Hindus and Mahommedans their own laws in regard to all matters of inheritance and succession, family law and matters relating to religion or caste. In the territories outside the presidency towns where courts of justice were established by the East India company, acting under the authority of the emperor of Delhi, the only assumption that could be made as to the law to be administered was that it was the law already in existence. Acting on this assumption the company's courts administered the Mahommedan criminal law which was the general law of the subjects of the Mogul emperor: the revenue system remained, as did also the existing relations of zemindar and ryot, i.e. of the cultivator and of the persons intermediate between the state and the cultivator. In regard to matters of family law, inheritance and succession, religion and caste the company's courts were expressly enjoined to apply the Hindu law to the Hindus, and the Mahommedan law to the Mahommedans. Of course it was also the duty of these courts to recognize well-established local usages. Thus practically all the topics of litigation at that time likely to arise were provided for. It was as time went on, when by intercourse with Europeans new ideas, and with them new wants, sprang up in the native populations, that gaps came to be discovered in the law. To such cases the judges had been vaguely told that they were to apply "the rules of equity and good conscience," which they naturally sought in the English law. The matters in which the notions of English law have most affected India are the power of completely separating the ownership of property from the enjoyment of it by means of trusts, the testamentary power, the creation of life estates, the substitution of one owner of property for another on the happening of some future event, the rules of evidence, criminal law, civil and criminal procedure and the subordination of the executive to the ordinary law.