hbe denounces "leaving on the statute-book
acts which are at variance with the spirit of the
times in which we live," and adds, forcibly, that
"we ought not to have the living in the arms
of the dead."

These disorders, in fact, arise from the clumsy
unsatisfactory way in which the process of
manufacturing statutes is conducted. " Drawing" an
act requires peculiar mental powers, and the
nicest and most delicate logical faculty, the most
careful study and research, and the labour of
weeks; above all, a real practical experience as
to the working of other acts; for nothing is so
fallacious as speculation in reference to the use
of clauses, which may be theoretically excellent,
but in practice get hopelessly jammed, and refuse
to move. This perilous function is often put
into the hands of young barristership—barely
beyond the legal grub state— as a little piece of
training, well meant, but fatal to the national
interests. But a yet more damaging result
ensues from the wholesale fashion in which an
act is dealt with by the six hundred and odd
legislators who are entitled to furnish straw
and bricks for the statutary Temple of Babel.
Any one who watches a bill through the House,
and sees how clause after clause is debated,
broken up, repaired, altered, and generally
tinkered, and sent out damaged in sense and
English, will not be surprised to learn how many
bills after this process become utterly unintelligible
and confused, and are withdrawn as
worthless. The instance of, say a Tenant Right
Bill, or a Fishery Bill, where innumerable
hostile interests have to be met and battled with,
where, after a battle of some hours, a sop is
grudgingly thrown to Hostile Interest No. 1,
who would otherwise shipwreck the measure,
and a compromise made with Hostile Interest
No. 2, who has artfully disguised his clause,
will eventually end in a series of set-offs and
compensations, which make the measure utterly
feeble, and of no possible influence whatever.

More comical results ensue in a really good
act, from hurry, and the confusion of many
law-makers. Such are exactly analogous to
that famous local prison act, one clause of
which decreed that the new jail was to be
constructed out of the materials of the old, while
another clause declared that the felons should
be detained in the old jail until the new one
was completed!

The remedy for all these evils must be
large, as the evil is large. First, there must be
a thorough winnowing, sifting, and purification
of our fifty thousand statutes. All the mere
shoddy and cinders of repealed, obsolete, and
expired statutes must be gathered and " shot"
into the most convenient dustbin. This is mere
hodmen's work. Then skilled hands may be
brought in, and the business of consolidation,
which is practically codification, may be set
about. All acts made at different periods,
and dealing arbitrarily with one subject,
should be brought together, pruned, made
consistent and harmonious, and fashioned into
single acts. The experiment has been already
made in detached instances with wonderful
results. Early in George the Third's reign an
attempt of this sort was made with the highway
acts. A gentleman, by way of experiment,
very recently moulded all the poor-law
acts, with their maze of enactments, repeals, and
re-enactments, into a single act of only one
hundred and sixty clauses. And as a more important
instance, the criminal law of England and Ireland
was only yesterday, with very little labour,
thus consolidated into a convenient shape. A
mass that straggled over innumerable monster
folios, that floundered through centuries, that
spread and spent itself far and near, shrunk
into logical shape and a perfect "handy book"
—and a very small handy book, too. There is no
reason why this should not be done wholesale.
Why is this wholesome and obvious scheme
delayed? There is a curious little history at-
tached to a certain fresh attempt made in this
direction some ten years ago: fresh, it may be
said, because, indeed, it is but one of a series.
With the accustomed parliamentary flourish, a
commission was ushered in: there was an
enormous flux of talk, a great deal of print, a good
deal more of "minutes," a chief commissioner
appointed, and a number of good young eager
equity draught-horses engaged; there were
meetings and more "minutes," and public
moneys voted with annual steadiness. The
work was by courtesy supposed to be going on
bravely. It now turns out that nothing has
been done. All the skilled legal labour that
could be got was appointed to supervise the
business; but as this consisted of " eminent"
overworked barristers, and "eminent" overworked
law-officers and judges, it may be conceived that
the supervision was of the most slender and
intermittent description. A strange arrangement
liad been concluded with the equity draught-
horses engaged, who were given to understand
that their occupation might be terminated at a
moment's warning; but, by way of compensation,
they were only expected to devote to this
pleasant bit of legal trifling such moments as
they might feel inclined to spare from more
important professional labours. Presently, the
working hands fell out among themselves as to
the principle on which the work was to be
conducted, and wrote smart pamphlets against each
other. The only element that seemed to enjoy
a healthy vitality was the chief commissioner,
who, at a fixed salary, rose calmly above all
incidents of discord or inefficiency. Finally, the
whole thing died out tranquilly (save the chief
commissioner) by that pleasant inaction common
to other commissions, leaving behind it the
unpleasant undefined flavour of a brackish jobbery.

The Lord Chancellor has now come forward
with one of those brilliant, complete, and finished
schemes, which are to law, what Mr. Gladstone's
periods are to finance. He proposes dealing
with the reports as well as the statutes, and
turning his labouring men—his architects,
masons, carvers, and decorators— into the old
dilapidated legal Seven Dials.

The whole task of consolidation has been made