The main legal point established in the judgment is that an acknowledgment of liability within Section 19 of the Limitation Act requires a definite admission of liability without the necessity to show a promise to pay, as required under English law.

Napier, J.

1. In the suit from which this Second Appeal lies, the question arose as to the effect of a statement made by a witness in certain criminal proceedings, whether that statement amounted to an acknowledgment of, liability within Section 19 of the Limitation Act. The statement is as follows: - I executed the promissory-note Ex. R (suit promissory-note). The contents of the promissory-note are correct." Ex. R (which is Ex. A in the present case) is a promissory-note acknowledging liability for Rs. 1,322-11-11 with a promise to pay with interest at 12 per cent, per annum. On that promissory-note there were, at the date that the document was shown to the witness, four endorsements of various payments in 1912. The statement made by the witness is, admittedly, within the period of limitation which has to be applied in this case. The question is whether this amounts to an acknowledgement.

2. Both the appellant and the respondent have relied on the decision of the Privy Council in Muniram Seth v. Seth Rupchand I.L.R. 33 Cal. 1047 (P.C.), the vakil for the appellant contending that their Lordships of the Privy Council have Laid down that the whole of the recognised English lajv on this subject applies in India. The passage from which he seeks to draw this inference is as follows: - "The Indian Limitation Act, Section 19, however, says nothing about a promise to pay and requires only a definite admission of liability, as to which there can be no reason for departing from the English principle that an unqualified admission and an admission qualified by a condition, which is fulfilled stand upon precisely the. same footing." Bearing in mind that their Lordships begin the sentence by saying that " The Indian Limitation Act says nothing about a promise to pay," it seems to me necessarily to follow that the reasoning of Courts in England based on the theory underlying the effect given to an acknowledgment, namely, that they indicate a promise to pay has very little application to cases under the Indian Act. Their Lordships also point out that the requirements of English Law are, if anything, more, stringent than those of Indian Law. This is, of course, due to the fact that Lord Tenterdens Act (9, Geo. IV C. 14,) of 1828, Section 1 assumes that the legal effect of the writing is that it evidences a new or continuing contract. It was the necessity of finding this new and continuing contract which induced English courts to give such a liberal interpretation to ordinary acknowledgments and read into them a promise to pay on the basis that honest men always intend to pay something the liability to which they acknowledge, but under the Indian Law, as pointed out by their Lordships, there is no necessity to show anything from which a promise to pay could be inferred and, therefore, any decisions of the Courts of India which consider these acknowledgments on the basis that they must be such from which a promise to pay can be inferred are no longer good law.

3. The same case was relied on for the respondent because of the particular matter dealt with and the language applied to the matter by their Lordships. The acknowledgment in the case before their Lordships was as follows; it was in probate proceedings: "That the applicant Rupchand Nanabhai is a big Mahajan of Burhampur paying Rs. 106 as income-tax. For the last five years he had opened current accounts with the deceased." Their Lordships say that the words " for the last five years" must necessarily have reference to the five years prior to the death of the testator which was in October 1898 and it appears that the petition in which the words are found was put in on the 28th of September 1889 very nearly a year later. Assuming, as their Lordships do, that the admission is of the condition of affairs up to the date of the testators death, their Lordships say this: The legal consequence would be that at that date either of them had a right as against the other to an account." And at