Year: 1869

Illinois Is In q singular condition.
Il Her people are expected to obey and
her courts and officers, to enforce
series Of laws neither officers, courts
nor people, can possibly Know
ANYTHING about. They cannot
be officially printed for at least
a month, and then only in volumes for
i the use of lawyers and courts. A bill
requiring their publication IN the
newspapers was voted down. AS the
Springfield Journal remarks:


or the general laws, many ezceedinsly
important. changing the present statues ln
most radical particulars; and as they nave
sstaken effect from and after their pflssaset
we have the singular anomaly Of the Pep ie
being under the operation OF laws M43cu
neithef they nor the courts know anything
about. and which cannot be officially pFtnted
FOR at least another month. 80


Proceedings such as this tend to cast
all law into contempt. Who can help
feeling that the Legislature was unfit
| for its duties when he finds himself
expected to- obey or enforce general
laws of which he can get no infOfma-
ton whatever? How can anybody
regard such law-making as anything
bnt afarce the Legislature probably
considered, and with good reason,



that its peculiar performances in matt
ters involving great pecuniary interests
really formed the only serious business
of the session. The real work to be
done was to take care of the railroads
and the rings, and other legislation
was looked upon as merely con-


1t viii be said that this is no new
thing-that other Legislatures have
done the same. But does that fact
make it in any degree a less absured
thing TO do? In fact, may we not
Justly trace much of the decline in
respect for and obedience to law to
the custom Of publishing the laws in
form only accessible to those few per-
sons who study the, laws officially or
professionally? T? We do not see how peO-
pleean be expected to regard with pecu-
| liar respect s code of laws which its
makers do not consider important
enough to publish.


venient disguise. =


twill be said that the laws areso nu-
merons, so intricate and volumnfOus,
that the people viii not read and cannot
understand them. Ifthat is true-and
we Judge that it may be in Illinois,
when about two thousand bills were





not the more clear that the people
must look upon this business as a
gigantic farce? What is the sense of
getting up laws so numerous and In
tFicate that nobody can keep track of
them except BY deVOting his whole
lifetime to that task ? If the whole
people were lawyers by professional
a Legislature oflawyers were making
laws for the government of a cammu-
nifty of laWyers-then there might be
some reason for giving them plenty
to do. But a community Of lawyers
would starve. Somebody must raise
food for these legal gentlemen to eat,
and make money to pay the sums
necessary to support the aforesaid
legal gentlemen in the making and the
study of the laws. And as for the
farmer, who is expected to- obey the
laws and to pay ali the taxes which
they may require, even when he can
never get at the acts themselves and
can find out what they are only by
consulting some laWyer-he raises
the food, makes the money, pays the
bulk of taxes, and that is his share in
the operation If his representative
goes to Springfield and votes away
taxes enough to enrich dozen rail-
road corporations, the farmer must
paw all the same, and If he wants to
know how it was done must consult a
lawyer to see the law.


OF course, this is Iaughable but has
it not a serious side2 The plain truth
is that we have unworthy and incOm-
petent legislators, in part because the
people who elect them have no means
of JUDGING whether they do well or
not. The crying necessity of the age
is to have fewer laws, and to have
these published so that all men can
read them and know who voted for
them. 'sPhe world is governed too
much," and that part of the world
known as the State of Illinois, with
its two Thousand new laws at a session,
is so much governed that its govern
ment is little better than robbery. Mis-
souri, is not by any means perfect, but
we can boast that our government has
not become proficient in the art Oflegis-
Iating money out Of the pockets of the
people into privats purses. We have
too many laws, and they are not pub
lished, but our Legislature has never
risen to the indignity of two thousand
enactments a year. But with differ
enees in degree, there is the same great
want in almost all the States we need
more direct responsibility oflegislatoTs
to constituents, and publication of all
laws, and we may then hope to have
very fewer laws to publish.--S. Louis
Democrat. n