dent enactment; and it takes its place in the Statute-book, not according to the order of subject, but according to the order of date. The error or defect which it is meant to set right may be merely clerical, or one of substance. In either case the course taken is the same; AND THE INQUIRER MUST REFER IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER TO EVERY SUCCEEDING VOLUME IN THE STATUTE BOOK, BEFORE HE IS TOLERABLY SURE THAT HE HAS BEFORE HIM NOT ONLY THE ORIGINAL ENACTMENT, BUT ALSO THE WHOLE OF THE AMENDING ENACTMENTS. We recommend a simpler method for the future. The existing statute-law being once consolidated, all further amendments should be made the object and occasion of a new edition of the original statute; and the amending act should be suffered to remain in force only until such new edition is duly and accurately made; which done, the expiration of the amending act ought to be declared and enacted by an 'expiring laws declaratory repeal act,' to be passed periodically for that purpose."-Report Stat. Law Commission, p. 120. But another phase of this surprising increase is visible in the enormous bulk of legislation which has, in the present day, collected round many special departments of our law, and which, in some cases, equals the total aggregate of our Statute-law of some centuries back. "There is such an accumulation "of statutes (complains Lord Bacon) "concerning one matter, and they so cross and intricate, that the certainty "is lost in the heap." When this complaint was uttered, the whole of the statutes of the realm occupied less than three volumes. "The law relating to "the Bank of England alone is spread 66 over several hundreds of statutes" (says the author of a well-known treatise on banking)', and the titles alone of these statutes fill about two hundred pages of the Statute-book. The Stamp Law is in a still more hopeless state of entanglement. Innumerable alterations have been made since the passing of the General Stamp Act of 1815; but independently of that, the laws affecting those duties date from the time of William and Mary, and various provisions enacted in that reign, and of Anne, and every succeeding sovereign are still in force. "Within the whole range of sub"jects embraced by the English Statute "Law, there is not one so complicated 1 See Grant on "Banking :" Preface. "and so far beyond the power of ordinary diligence to unravel."2 And yet there is hardly a single branch of the law which is oftener brought to bear on the most important transactions of every day life! Again, if we look to the Poor Law, a digest of this subject (completed in 1854 by Mr. Coode, a gentleman peculiarly conversant with the subject), embodied no less than 342 acts of Parliament, consisting of eight thousand, six hundred and thirty-six sections! A draft act for the consolidation of the laws relating to the national debt (prepared by the Statute Law Commission) melts down upwards of one hundred and sixty acts of Parliament. This unwieldiness, of which it would be easy to multiply examples, Patchwork perpetuates its own evil. legislation is both the result and occasion of the increasing difficulty of obtaining a comprehensive knowledge of even any single branch of the law, and of ascertaining its bearing on the whole. As in the case of modern natural philosophy, the study of law becomes departmental, and the race of great lawyers dwindles into legal mechanics, each conversant with the special wheelwork of his own department, but unable to appreciate its bearing on the entire machine. It is in many cases true that the division of labour insures its perfection. Thus the vast enlargement of the field of natural science has necessarily divided that field among many labourers, who severally devote themselves to a specific branch of investigation, each willing to abandon so much as is not immediately connected with the peculiar section which he may have chosen. Astronomers are content to divide the heavens among themselves; one will for years patiently contemplate the star dust of the milky way, another will register each meteor as it falls, a third will direct his undivided attention to the motion of some bright particular star,"-each satisfied with contributing the result of 2 Stamp's "Index to the Statutes, title Stamps." his individual labour to the common fund of knowledge. And experience has proved it to be the best working system for the advancement of natural philosophy. But this does not hold equally good in the science of the law. The view of the true lawyer, whether in the capacity of advocate, judge, or legislator, should be panoramic, as that of a general who would marshal his forces to battle. In the absolute impossibility of obtaining this view, has been the cause of the apparent degeneracy and want of breadth of principle so often apparent in modern legislation, rather than in the punier intellect of the legislator. The burden under which the gigantic intellect of Bacon groaned, augmented as it now is tenfold, may well paralyse, if it does not crush, those who have in the present day to work under it. Expedients and makeshifts are the result. Thrice at least since the beginning of the present century has the entire body of Customs' law been revised and consolidated, and its accumulated provisions brought to a new starting point. Twice within half the same period has the Law of Bankruptcy been consolidated and amended, besides having been the subject of innumerable supplementary enactments; and already a third Bankruptcy Consolidation and Amendment Act is announced as on the eve of maturity. To the same cause may be traced the practice, now happily disused, of including in one statute a multiplicity of enactments relating to subjects perfectly incongruous and disconnected with each other. The 23d Geo. II. c. 26, is quoted by the commissioners as a specimen of what is familiar to lawyers as a Hodge-podge Act. Its provisions comprise the following miscellaneous items. Deal Pilots-Excise on Rum-Frauds in Measurements of Coals in WestminsterLocks and Weirs on the Thames-Seamen in the Merchant Service-Preservation of Salmon on the Ribble-Fees in Trial at the AssizesJustices' Warrants-How long the Exciseoffice may be kept open-Turnip Stealingand for the Regulation of Attornies and Solicitors. and turnip stealing, coupled with the preservation of salmon and the regulations of attornies, is apparently as subtle as the well known derivation of cucumbers from King Jeremiah. Again, in an act for explaining the window tax (20th Geo. II. c. 42) a provision is introduced (section 3), "that all existing and future "acts which mention England shall also "extend to Berwick-upon-Tweed." Statutes like these form the very Plica Polonica of legislation; the mass becomes difficult to disentangle, and yet more dangerous to cut; and, in addition to the patient's constitutional dislike to change, the morbid growth itself renders change almost impossible. But a further source of difficulty and obscurity exists in the language in which the earlier statutes address themselves to the reader. Up to the 51st Henry III. Latin is their language; that statute is, however, the first enacted in French-which is generally used up to the 1st Richard III. But to the reign of Edward IV. they were enacted in Latin and Norman-French : the same statute occasionally (as that of Westminster II. c. 48-9), abruptly changing from one tongue to the other. The 34th of Westminster II. is also in French, between two in Latin. The best general rule, says Mr. Daines Barrington, which can be given for an act of Parliament being in Latin or French, is that, when the interests of the clergy are particularly concerned, the statute is in Latin. The last instance of the use of Norman-French occurs in the reign of Edward V. The 39th Henry VI. the first chapter of which is in French, the second in Latin, is the last enacted in both tongues; and the 33rd Henry VI. is the last wholly in Latin. It is somewhat singular that, after a statute of Edward III. had prohibited the use of the French in law pleadings, it should so long have continued to be the language of the Statute-book. The reason assigned by Mr. Daines Barrington, p. 59, for this incongruity, is that there was a standing committee in Parliament, to receive petitions from the provinces of France, The connection between Deal pilots which formerly belonged to the Crown of England; as these petitions, therefore, were in French, and the answers likewise in that language, it might probably be a reason why all the Parliamentary translations should be in French by way of uniformity. And this conjecture, he adds, is confirmed by the statutes having continued to be in English from the time when we were dispossessed of our French provinces. Yet more remarkable is it that, although an ordinance of 1650 directed the translation of all the reports from the Law-French into English, and the translation of all the law proceedings from Latin into English, and an ordinance of the following year, that the translation should be referred to the Lords Commissioners, Speaker, and Judges, no means (if we may credit the commissioners), to secure uniformity in the translation of the statutes, should up to the present moment have been taken. In one respect, however, the earlier race of statutes has the advantage over that of later date, viz. in the absence of prolixity and tautology; one of the first, and perhaps most striking examples of which occurs in the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII. in an act for the settlement of the Crown. But, turning awhile from these gloomy statistics, it is refreshing to observe that the law of compensation, universal throughout nature, extends even to the grave subjects here treated of. The most arid desert has its well; the Gentian flower peeps upwards through the Alpine snows; and even the Statute-book contains more than one humorous piece of legislation, worthier perhaps of Theodore Hook than of Solon. Thus in an Act for the Better Regulating of Parish Registers (52nd Geo. III. c. 146) the eighteenth section provides for the application of penalties, and directs that one half of them shall go to the person who shall inform, or sue for the same, and the remainder to the poor of the parish. The only penalty, imposed by the Statute, is that of transportation for fourteen years. Even our very efforts in the cause of statutory reform, like efforts alien to the nature of those who make them, are apt to savour of the ludicrous. Like Mr. Caxton, we become the fathers of anachronisms, and of the strangest kind. Thus the introduction of free-trade precedes the abolition of an act which prohibits the wearing of cloth buttons; and Railway Legislation is well nigh contemporaneous with an Act for the Repeal of the Ordeal of Battle. The Our love of precedent is, by the by, well instanced in the mode in which one of our earliest legal writers commends this same ordeal of battle to his countrymen. The author1 of the "Miroir des Justices" urges that the appeal of battle is allowable upon the warrant of the combat between David and the people of Israel for the one part, and Goliath for the Philistines of the other part. A reason which, says Blackstone, Pope Nicholas I. very seriously decides to be inconclusive. consequences of the non-repeal of this obsolete custom are remarkable. For, though at the time when Blackstone thus wrote, the last occasion on which this appeal had been resorted to was on the Northern Circuit in 1638, and the practice had, with one exception, remained dormant since the third year of the reign of Elizabeth, it slept but to revive in the memory of the present generation. This was in the celebrated case of Ashford v. Thornton, which occurred on the Midland Circuit in 1817, and led to the final abolition of the practice two years later by the 59th Geo. III. c. 46. It is perhaps less remarkable that the nineteenth century, which has witnessed a widely-spread belief in "spiritrapping," should have retained, even subsequently to the abolition of the ordeal of battle, a statute against witchcraft. But such is the fact; for the 28th Eliz. cap. 2, an Irish Statute against Witchcraft, made by an Irish Parliament, was only repealed in 1821 by 1st, 2nd Geo. IV. c. 18. "Reputed to be Andrew Horne, a native of Gloucester. Lord Coke supposes the greater part of it to have been written previously to the Conquest, and that Horne added many things to it in the reign of Edward the First." -Crabbe's History of English Law, p. 214. It is well that we should be reminded of our own inconsistencies. Loudly as we censure our American brothers for retaining the institution of slavery, and boast, if truly at least somewhat pharisaically, "that we are not as other men," "in our self-laudation we find it conve"nient to ignore its recent existence in "our own island." It is, perhaps, but natural that Tony Foster the Puritan should avoid any allusions to the peccadilloes of Tony Fire the Faggot! Though the last claim of villanage in the records of English courts was made as far back as the 15th of James I., and even at an earlier period it had well-nigh disappeared, it is most true that slavery existed in Scotland till actually within eight years of the act which crowned Wilberforce's labour. Witness the preamble of an act passed in 1799 (39th Geo. III. c. 56), which runs as follows : "Whereas, before the passing of an Act of the fifteenth of his present Majesty, many Colliers, Coalbearers, and Salters were bound for life to, and transferable with, the Collieries and Salt works where they worked, but by the said Act their Bondage was taken off and they were declared to be free, notwithstanding which many Colliers and Coalbearers and Salters still continue in a state of Bondage from not having complied with the Provisions, or from having become subject to the Penalties of that Act." It then proceeds to declare them free from servitude, as if they had obtained a decree under the preceding act of 1775, to which it alludes, and which commences in these significant terms : "Whereas by the Statute Law of Scotland as explained by the Judges of the Court of Law there, many Colliers and Coalbearers and Salters are in a state of Slavery or Bondage, bound to the Collieries and Salt works, where they work for life, transferable with the Collieries and Salt works when their original masters have no further use for them." "That," said Tony, on being reminded of the share he had in broiling two heretical bishops, "that was while I was in "the gall of bitterness and bond of ini A curious contrast to the tendency to perpetuity and precedent exhibited in our own legislation may be found in the fundamental constitutions of Carolina, framed by the celebrated John Locke. To avoid the confusion arising from multiplicity of laws, all acts of the provincial Parliament were appointed to endure only one hundred years, after which they were to cease and expire of themselves, without the formality of an express repeal; and, to avoid the perplexity created by a multiplicity of commentators, all written comments whatever on the fundamental constitutions, or on any part of the common or statute laws of Carolina, were strictly prohibited. Equally instructive is the contrast presented by the brief existence of this constitution, transplanted as it was ready-made into the colony, compared with that of our own country, which has been the growth of the habits, feelings, and prejudices of cen.turies. The constitutions of Carolina lasted only some thirty years, being framed in 1668, and formally abrogated in 1700; when, "because they had no root they withered away." So true was the saying of Sir James Mackintosh, "that constitutions are not made, but grown!" On the other hand it would almost seem that the offspring of our own legislation laboured under the fatal gift of Tithonus, that of immortality without youth; or that, like the race of Swift's ghastly imagination, although useless, impotent, and unintelligible by reason of their great age, they were physically incapable of death. The miserable race of Laputa has yet many an antitype in our own Statutebook, although but three years ago an Act for the repeal of disused Statutes annihilated one hundred and nineteen of these legal Struldbrugs, and consigned them to that limbo of Milton, whither works, "Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, Dissolved on earth, fleet ever and in vain, Till final dissolution wander there, Not in the neighbouring moon, as some have dreamed." Paradise Lost, Book III. 456. D of England; as these petitions, therefore, were in French, and the answers likewise in that language, it might probably be a reason why all the Parliamentary translations should be in French by way of uniformity. And this conjecture, he adds, is confirmed by the statutes having continued to be in English from the time when we were dispossessed of our French provinces. Yet more remarkable is it that, although an ordinance of 1650 directed the translation of all the reports from the Law-French into English, and the translation of all the law proceedings from Latin into English, and an ordinance of the following year, that the translation should be referred to the Lords Commissioners, Speaker, and Judges, no means (if we may credit the commissioners), to secure uniformity in the translation of the statutes, should up to the present moment have been taken. In one respect, however, the earlier race of statutes has the advantage over that of later date, viz. in the absence of prolixity and tautology; one of the first, and perhaps most striking examples of which occurs in the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII. in an act for the settlement of the Crown. But, turning awhile from these gloomy statistics, it is refreshing to observe that the law of compensation, universal throughout nature, extends even to the grave subjects here treated of. The most arid desert has its well; the Gentian flower peeps upwards through the Alpine snows; and even the Statute-book contains more than one humorous piece of legislation, worthier perhaps of Theodore Hook than of Solon. Thus in an Act for the Better Regulating of Parish Registers (52nd Geo. III. c. 146) the eighteenth section provides for the application of penalties, and directs that one half of them shall go to the person who shall inform, or sue for the same, and the remainder to the poor of the parish. The only penalty, imposed by the Statute, is that of transportation for fourteen years. Even our very efforts in the cause of statutory reform, like efforts alien to the nature of those who make them, are apt to savour of the ludicrous. Like Mr. Caxton, we become the fathers of anachronisms, and of the strangest kind. Thus the introduction of free-trade precedes the abolition of an act which prohibits the wearing of cloth buttons; and Railway Legislation is well nigh contemporaneous with an Act for the Repeal of the Ordeal of Battle. Our love of precedent is, by the by, well instanced in the mode in which one of our earliest legal writers commends this same ordeal of battle to his countrymen. The author1 of the "Miroir des Justices" urges that the appeal of battle is allowable upon the warrant of the combat between David and the people of Israel for the one part, and Goliath for the Philistines of the other part. A reason which, says Blackstone, Pope Nicholas I. very seriously decides to be inconclusive. The consequences of the non-repeal of this obsolete custom are remarkable. For, though at the time when Blackstone thus wrote, the last occasion on which this appeal had been resorted to was on the Northern Circuit in 1638, and the practice had, with one exception, remained dormant since the third year of the reign of Elizabeth, it slept but to revive in the memory of the present generation. This was in the celebrated case of Ashford v. Thornton, which occurred on the Midland Circuit in 1817, and led to the final abolition of the practice two years later by the 59th Geo. III. c. 46. It is perhaps less remarkable that the nineteenth century, which has witnessed a widely-spread belief in "spiritrapping," should have retained, even subsequently to the abolition of the ordea battle, a statute against witchcraft. the fact; for the 28th Eliz. Irish Statute against Witcher by an Irish Parliament, was only in 1821 by 1st, 2nd Geo. IV. c. "Reputed to be Andrew Horne, of Gloucester. Lord Coke supposes the part of it to have been written previo the Conquest, and that Horne added things to it in the reign of Edward the Crabbe's History of English Law, p. 21 is |