The Press.
London, England, 1857-06-27 00:00:00

THE STATUTE LAW COMMISSION.

Mn. LOCKE KING gave notice of a motion the
other day, the object of which was the im-
mediate abolition of the Statute Law Com-
mission. We regret that he changed his mind,
as his proposal would have led to a full and
clear explanation on the part of those engage d
in this great work as to what they have already
done, and as to the prospects of their ultimate
success. That explanation, had it been called
forth, would have satisfied both the House of
Commons and the country ; and it was in all
probability a conviction of this fact that in-
duced that impetuous law reformer to post-
pone his threatened attack. Mr. LOCKE KING
has forgotten that Rome was not built in a
day. Jt is an oversight peculiar to politicians
of a certain class, who rush to conclusions and
grasp at results without taking any account of
obstacles or even im possibilities. Mr. LOCKE
KING is so profoundly ignorant of the nature
of the work which is now being performed by
the Statute Law Commission that he thinks
they ought to have finished their labours long
ago. Let us see what these really are.

The work which the Commission have under- 1
taken is to consolidate the Statute Law of the 1
empire from the days of King JOHN to those
of VICTORIA. At present this is embraced in
some forty or fifty large and closely-printed
tomes. When the work is completed their
number will be reduced to four or five At
present no one, except a practising lawyer,
thinks of purchasing the statutes at large, the
lex seripta of the empire; when the work is
finished it will be found in every well-furnished
private library. At present the statute book
is a sealed volume to all except professional
eyes. Woe be to the adventurous layman
who ventures to consult it for himself. No
doubt he will find Acts of Parliament
in plenty upon every conceivable subject,
but thrown together in such strange de-
fiance of order or arrangement as will
quickly drive him to despair. He may proba-
bly find at first the enactment he is in search
of ; then he finds, to his dismay, that it has
been repealed by a subsequent one ; on search-
ing further, he may discover that it is revived
by a third act, and totally altered by a fourth.
Bewildered and disgusted, he finally gives up
the hopeless task, and, if he happens to be a
reformer of the LOCKE KING school, he will
insist that the statute-book should be forth-
with reduced to the size of a pocket almanack,
which everybody shall be able both to buy and
to understand. Another class of law re-
formers, represented by Mr. JOHN GEORGE
PHILLIMORE, take a different view of the
matter. They insist that, instead of our

619

attempting to consolidate the statutes only, we
should codify, after the manner of JUSTIN lAN
and of NarorEos, the entire law of England.
both written and unwritten. As we pointed out
on a former occasion, there is hut one objection
to this project, but it is a fatal one. It is
simply impracticable, and for this reason, that
we du not believe the British Legislature, as
at present constituted, would ever agree to
adopt any code that human ingenuity could
devise. It is easy to codify under a despotism,
but to what endless controversies would any
attempt of the kind lead in this free country ?
We cannot even frame a code for India—where
public opinion, in the European sense, cannot
be said to exist—although we have been
working at it for thirty years. We may learn
from this instructive fact how hopeless a task
it would be at the present day to codify the
laws of England.
But the work of the Statute Law Commis-
sion, although difficult and laborious in the
extreme, has been proved by experience to be
perfectly practicable. That work consists in
purging the statute-book of a mass of super-
fluous and obselete matter with which it is now
encumbered, and in preserving, arranging and
consolidating the thousands of statutes which
are now in force. It is the duty of those en-
gaged in this herculean task to add nothing to
the existing law and to take nothing from it.
It is a work which every law reformer since th•
days of BACON has pronounced to be necessary
and which it is satisfactory to know has now
been commenced in earnest. The whole of
the criminal law has been completed,
consolidated under eight different bills
whiell are now before the House of Lords.
We understand that a variety of other bills
will be presented to Parliament before the
recess, including those relating to commercial
law and the law of real property. There is,
indeed, now no doubt but that this great na-
tional undertaking may be successfully com-
pleted in the course of a few years, provided
the Legislature continues to supply the neces-
sary funds. To abolish the Commission just
as we are beginning to reap the fruits of their
labours would be an act of folly, in favour of
which Mr. LOCKE KING may declaim in vain.

A DARING MURDER was recently committed at
Bujukdere, Constantinople. A relative of Prince
Daniel of Montenegro was shot in broad dsylight.
He was a young man of twenty-five or twenty-six,
and had been for some time in the Austrian army.
He had dined at the Hotel Lapierre, situate at one
end of the village, and was walking back, arm•in-arm
with M. Noviiiotf, a secretary of the Russian Em-
bassy, when, on passing the country house of the
Spanish Minister, a man rushed out from a by-street
and fired two shots at him from behind, one of which
entered the hip, and the other passed through the
side. He survived only a few hours. The murderer
escaped, and has not been found. The feud reign-
ing between the two branches of the princely family
of Montenegro is said to be the cause of this atro-
cious murder.
MEsots, the most celebrated and the most suc-
cessful charlatan of I'aris, the itinerant pencil seller,
and immortalised by Albert Smith, is just dead, and
has left behind him a fortune of 400,000 fr. No
one can have passed many days in Paris within the
last ten years without having observed on the Place
de la Bourse, the Place du-Chatelet, the Place
de Madeleine, or some other open space,
the conspicuous figure of a tall handsome
man, with a brass helmet and plumes,
and a beard—the very model of that of
Hudibras, "in shape and hue most like a tile"
—standing on the box of a light cart, and
haranguing a crowd. He wore a costly mantle of
green velvet embroidered with gold, and on
the fingers of his white hands were many
rings of great price. Behind him was a
squire who from time to time blew a trumpet
to attract public attention, and whose garments
were only less splendid than that of his master.
The only end and aim of all this pomp and circum-
stance was the sale of lead pencils at two sons apiece.
" Why," he would say, " do I fig myself up in this
ludicrous costume? I will tell you candidly ; because
going about in this dress I sell a great many pencils,
and if I stayed at home in a warehouse coat I should
sell very few. I am a quack, I admit, but I am an
honest one, for I sell a good article ; and if you want
a pencil I doubt whether you will get as good a one
anywhere else for the money." He was a remark-
ably healthy-looking man, and could not have been
more than forty years old, but he was carried off by
a fit of apoplexy.