The Press.
London, England, 1856-02-16 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

would insure the appearance of all future laws in an
efficient and intelligible shape. Lord Bacon had
originally suggested the formation of such a depart-
ment; Lord Brougham, Lord Lyndhurst, Lord
Langdale, had all enforced the necessity of estab-
lishing a board to assist in the preparation of public
bilis. In conclusion, Mr. Napier insisted upon the
advantages which would result from this reform of
our current legislation in conjunction with an ex-
purgated and a classified code, which he remarked
ought to be the intelligible expression of the mind
of the country. Trade, public works, war, health,
and education, had, or would have, their separate
departments, and why should justice be left unre-
presented ? For himself, he was determined to
persevere in the object he had undertaken. He pro-
posed that the new department should occupy itself
with the amendment of the old law, the supervision
of current legislation, and watch its practical work-
ing,. The Houses of Parliament would then be
engaged with broad principles and great truths,
rather than with miserable and petty details, and we
should have our acts of Parliament made uniform
and harmonious, and a general system of law con-
sistent, rational, clear, and intelligible.
Mr. COLLIER seconded the motion. It addressed
itself to an old constitutional malady, which per-
vaded to a certain degree every member of the body
politic, but which, because it was not absolutely
intolerable, we were apt to regard as an unavoidable
dispensation of Providence, and not the result of our
own ignorance and folly. In every other department
of the State we were anxious to avail ourselves of
every new invention, but in courts of law we clung to
our me,Neval machinery. Not content with courts
of law and equity, we had three sets of ecclesiastical
courts, with a third mode of procedure. Our statute-
book was a mass of laws arranged without form and
upon no plan, so that it was impossible to say how
many were obsolete, or how many in force ; and the
worst of it was that this was not a past hot a present
and increasing evil. The reason why it continued
was, that law reform was nobody's business. The
work of reform doubtless would be gigantic; but
when the Roman, tha French, and the American
laws had been codified, why should we give up the
task as hopeless? The present proposal was a step
in the right direction. We had precedents on all
sides for the appointment of a Minister to the
D(.partment of Justice, and he trusted the house
would take the matter into its serious consideration.

Mr. BAINES admitted the importance of the sub-
ject. There was a concurrent opinion as to the
existence of the evil, and the necessity of a remedy.
He did not agree with the appointment of a Minister
of Justice, which involved important political as well
as legal considerations. The Statute Law Commis-
sioners were about to submit a plan upon this ques-
tion ; he suggested that it would be preferable that
this plan should he first seen by the house before it
adopted a resolution of an indefinite character, and
which pledged the house to nothing at all.
Mr. Loom KING and Mr. WIGRAM approved the
principle of Mr. Napier's motion.
Sir GEORGE GREY hoped Mr. Napier would not
press the house to a division upon the question of
the appointment of a Minister of Justice. The sub-
ject should receive the opinion of the able and
eminent men composing the Statue Law Commis-
sion. The whole subject was of great importance,
and could not be disposed of by a mere resolution of
the house.
Lord JOHN RUSSELL did not think that Mr. Baines
was correct in stating that the motion was vague.
It was as explicit as it could well be. It was not Mr.
Napier's business to point out the details ; it WAS his
business to assert the principle, and that he had
done. Still, after the statement which had been
made on the part of the Government, he (Lord John
Russell) did not see how the house could well pro-
ceed to a vote. It was out of the question to expect
that the Crown lawyers could devote themselves to
the question of law reform. Of the two plans, that
of Mr. Napier and the one shadowed forth by the
Government, he (Lord John Russell) considered
Mr. Napier's plan of a responsible Minister the most
philosophical, the most practical, and the most con-
ducive to the objects in view.
Mr. MALINS admitted the necessity for improving
the process of current legislation, but this he could
say that, under the present plan, legislation had the
advantage of the greatest practical experience from
members of the house. He could not vote for the
motion, preferring to wait till the plan spoken of by
Mr. Baines was promulgated.
Lord PALMERSTON advised the house to exercise
caution before committing itself to the appointment
of a Minister of Justice. The difficulties in that
direction were greater than appeared at first sight.
For one thing, individual members might insist upon
their own views in opposition to the suggestions of
the Minister of Justice It was impossible to ex-
pect that members of Parliament would readily re-
nounce their independent opinions in matters of
legislation. The noble lord hoped Mr. Napier would
not press his motion to a division but wait till the

149

plan spoken of was promulgated. Should the learned
gentleman deem that plan insufficient, he may take
the opinion of the house upon his own scheme.
Mr. NAPIER replied, and in his turn expressed a
hope that the Government would not compel him to
take a division.

On the suggestion of Sir GEORGE GREY,
Mr. NAPIER consented to strike out that part of
his motion which pledged the house to the establish-
ment of a new department in the State.
The motion thus amended was agreed to.
CONSOLIDATION OF THE STATUTE LAW.

Sir FITZROY KEIIX, on Thursday, moved for leaNe
to bring in a bill to consolidate the statute low
relating to offences against the person, and to amer d
the statute law relating to bills of exchange and pre•
missory notes. He proposed to classify and suodi-
vide the statutes under the heads of the differert
subjects to which they related—to repeal the statutes
upon each of those subjects, and to re-enact them 'n
a single act of Parliament. The law now contains d
about 20,000 acts, which he proposed to reduce to
200 or 300 only, each act embodying the statute law
upon one particular subject; the whole to be em-
braced in a single index :

To chow tt'e necessity of consolidation, it was only nem:
sary to consider the statute•book. Such was its state of
confusion that judges who had to administer the law,
counsel who had to advise upon it, and the subjects of the
realm who had to observe and obey it, in order to ascei-
tain the law upon any subject, must (in the absence of a
text-book sufficiently ample and accurate to afford them
exact information) search through the whole of the
statutes from Magna Charts to the present time, and afttr
all some section of a statute might escape their attentior,
and thus leave them in error. When any member of Pat-
liament, from a laudable desire to improve the law,
brought a bill into l'arliament, he would find it necessary,
and yet extremely difficult, to make himself master of every
provision in the sta.ute law bearing upon the subj.ct ; and
probably some clause in the new measure would be incon-
sistent with some existing enactment, and thus a measure,
n4eful in itself, led to litigation and uncertainty in the
law.
Adverting to the various fruitless attempts made to
reduce the Statute Law into a more systematic Corm,
Sir Fitzroy Kelly, distinguishing between codification
and consolidation of the entire written law, proceeded
to explain the plan he proposed to adopt :

What he proposed to do was to take one, or two, or three
of the most important, and, at the same time, most
familiar subjects within the whole compass of the law, and
which were also the subject of several acts of Parliament;
then to go through the whole forty volumes of the statutes,
and extract therefrom every act of Parliament, and every
provision, every sentence and line in any act of Parliament
which had any bearing upon that subject. That had, in
truth, been done with relation to offences against the
person, and bills of exchange and promissory notes, by the
hills which he now wished to submit to the house. To
explain what his intention was with regard to the
statutes generally, he would point out what had been done
in relation to the statutes referring to bills of exchanae.
Any lawyer wishing to ascertain the state of the existing
law with respect to bills of exchange would, unless he
consulted some text-writer or some treatise on the subject,
have to go through thirteen acts of Parliament, be-
ginning in the reign of William the Third and extending,
he (Sir F. Kelly) believed, to the present reign. He won d
have to look through the whole of those statutes, section I y
section, to see whether there might not be a provision in
some statute—passed,perhaps, in the reign of Queen Anre
--which repealed or qualified a provision in some previous
statute on the subject. What he therefore proposed was,
to take out of each statute all that related to the particular
subject upon which the law was to be consolidated, and
then to repeal altogether the branch of the statute relating
to the subject. Thus, in the case of hills of exchange, one
single act would be substituted for the thirteen statutes
now existing on the subject. The proposed bill to consoli-
date the law with regard to offences against the per's, n
would have the effect of curtailing the statute-book by
about 1,000 pages more; and the subject which would
probably next be dealt with—the law of insurances—would
take out about another 1,000 pages.
As successive acts of Parliament fell into desuetude
they would be removed from the statute-book. As
to the codification of the law, its enormous difficulties
would be materially lessened by a previous consolida-
tion of the Statute Law. He proposed to deal first
with the statute law relating to offences against
the person; and secondly, with the statute law
relating to bills of exchange and promissory notes ;
and pledged himself most carefully to superintend
and revise the preparation of his measures, and em-
ploy none but the most competent persons upon the
work. In conclusion, the hon. member alluded to
the difficulties of codification, expressed his perfect
confidence in the practicability of the measures he
proposed, and, though so vast a subject would require
time, he believed that in two years, if his measures
were carried, the whole Statute Law of England
would be consolidated.
Lord STANLEY supported the measure. For half a
century the question of law reform had been daily
rising into greater and greater prominence—but
from the want of a directing mind, and from a def.•
eiency of popular interest, it bad been thrust aside
for other matters less important but more interest-
ing. The difficulty had arisen, not so much from