ΤΟ HIS EXCELLENCY JOHN CLARK, GOVERNOR AND COMMANDER IN CHIEF OF THE ARMY AND NAVY I HAVE the honour of reporting to your Excellency a Digest of the Laws of Georgia, compiled by authority and appointment of the General Assembly, and in pursuance of the act passed the twenty-first of December, 1819. It would have been as gratifying to myself, as it no doubt would have been to the public, if I could have made this report within the time prescribed by the Legislature; but it was impracticable. In a work of such variety and magnitude as that of analyzing and comparing a mass of nearly three thousand acts and resolutions, and culling from them the passages still in force, it is impossible to foresee, with any approach to certainty, what labour may be necessary, or how much time it will consume. I beg your Excellency to be assured, that no sacrifice has been withheld, and no labour and diligence spared, to finish it as early as possible, and to render it useful to the public. OLIVER H. PRINCE. Milledgeville, Nov. 1821. 1 Executive Department, Georgia, WHEREAS, by an act passed the 21st day of December, 1819, entitled "An Act prescribing the form of a Digest or Manual of the Laws of Georgia," it is "enacted and declared, that during the year eighteen hundred and twenty, a Digest of the Laws of this state shall be formed and arranged, which shall include all acts and resolutions of the Legislature heretofore passed, and which may be passed during the present session, which are public and general, and excluding such as are private or local, and also such as have been repealed. And that to said Digest shall be added an Appendix, which shall contain the Constitution of the United States and of the State of Georgia as amended, the Statute of Frauds and Perjuries, passed in the 29th year of the reign of Charles the II; also all the acts relating to writs of Habeas Corpus." And by the same Act it is further enacted and declared, "that the Legislature shall by joint ballot appoint some fit and proper person to arrange a Digest in pursuance of this act, who shall report the same to his Excellency the Governor, who after the same has been examined by a Committee appointed for that purpose, shall approve or disapprove the same." AND WHEREAS, Oliver H. Prince, Esquire, was by joint ballot of both branches of the Legislature, in conformity with the before in part recited act, elected on the sixteenth December, 1819, to form and arrange a Digest in pursuance of the act aforesaid. AND WHEREAS, the said Oliver H. Prince hath presented to me a compilation of the Laws and Resolutions of this State, up to the year 1819 inclusive, with an Appendix thereto, made in conformity to the said Act, which compilation was by an order of this department of the twelfth November last, submitted to the inspection and examination of the Hon. John A. Cuthbert, the Hon. Augustin S. Clayton, and Charles J. M'Donald, Esquire, who have reported thereon as follows, viz. "Pursuant to your request, contained in an executive appointment of the twelfth ultimo, we have carefully examined the Digest of the Laws of this State, prepared and reported by Oliver H. Prince, Esquire, to your Excellency. This book, compiled in conformity to the act of the twenty-first of December, 1819, and subjected by us to a scrupulous comparison with the original statutes in the office of the Secretary of State, is found to embrace essentially every object contemplated by the above-mentioned law, and is finished in a style of great accuracy and perspicuity. "As a revised Code then, whether considered in reference to the judiciousness of its arrangement, or the fidelity of its execution, in both of which particulars there is a strict compliance with the views of the Legislature authorizing the work, we think it fully entitled to the public confidence." NOW BE IT KNOWN, to all whom it may concern, that I, John Clark, Governor of the State of Georgia, do, in conformity with the aforesaid report, and in obedience to the afore-mentioned act, hereby approve of the aforesaid compilation. JOHN CLARK. |
