rules of pleading and practice, which have recently been promulgated by the Judges. We showed that these rules—which, be it remembered, play quite as important a part in the administration of justice as the provisions contained in the Common Law Procedure Acts themselves-have now, notwithstanding that they have never been placed on the Statute Rolls, the full force of ordinary enactments, in consequence of their having been submitted to Parliament, and left unaltered by the Legislature for a specific period. We then asked, "What is to prevent Parliament from empowering and directing certain commissioners, &c., to prepare a new edition of the Public General Acts now in force, which edition, when printed, should be laid before both Houses, and if not questioned within three months, should be treated as an 'authorized' edition ?" It will be observed that the whole of the above reasoning was levelled at what we justly described as Mr. Ker's "astounding assertion;" and that the mode of proceeding referred to by us forms no part of the plan recommended in our Report. We merely wished to prove that Parliament was not precluded, as Mr. Ker contended it was, by any inconvenient form, from investing with legislative authority whatever edition of the statutes it might, in its wisdom, deem deserving of superior credit. The plan which we actually recommended is contained in our eighteenth Resolution, and is to the following effect:-"To confer on the new edition, when completed, proper legislative authority, an Act must be passed to declare that no public general enactment which is not inserted in that edition, and which has been passed prior to its date, shall be of any force or effect, except so far as it may relate to acts done, rights and titles acquired, or liabilities incurred under it." And we are at a loss to understand how such a plan can be fairly characterized as one which, in the language of Mr. Ker, involves "the abdication by Parliament of its duties in favour of certain commissioners to an extent quite unjustifiable, and entirely out of the question." So far from suggesting that Parliament should abandon any of its duties or functions, we expressly provide that it should perform them in the ordinary mode. When the Bill is brought in to confer legislative authority on the new edition, it will become the duty

of each House to withhold its assent to the measure until satisfactory proof be furnished that the work in question is really what it purports to be, and that it has been prepared with sufficient care and circumspection to warrant the Legislature in granting to it the distinction prayed. Nor will such proof be difficult of attainment. Of course, no one imagines that it will be necessary for a committee of either House to examine in detail, and page by page, the different volumes of the new edition, in order to form an opinion as to the accuracy of the commissioners by whom it has been prepared; but the merits of the edition can be tested, and most fairly tested, by selecting ten or twelve separate portions of the work, and by then ascertaining, either with or without the aid of skilled witnesses, how far the process of expurgation has there been performed. In other words, the "bulk" of the new edition will be judged of by the "samples." This is the process universally adopted whenever any Consolidation Bill, or other measure of unusual length or complexity, is brought under the notice of Parliament; and if a more minute investigation were instituted in these cases, the business of legislation would inevitably come to a dead lock. What chance would Sir Robert Peel have had of passing his admirable measures for reforming the Criminal Law, if no reliance had been placed on the draughtsmen employed by him, and if Parliament had determined to examine, section by section, the 130 Acts which he repealed by 7 & 8 Geo. 4, c. 27? We claim for the draughtsmen who shall prepare the new edition of the statutes the same amount of public confidence-no more and no less-which has uniformly been placed in gentlemen who have been intrusted by Government with the preparation of important Bills; and to contend, as Mr. Ker does, that if Parliament were to repose this limited trust in their zeal, ability, and discretion, it would "unconstitutionally abandon its functions," and confer "absolute power on the draughtsmen over the whole Statute Law of England," is to sacrifice common sense at the shrine of mere idle declamation.

We now propose to furnish two "specimens" of Mr. Ker's reasoning powers, and we trust that they will be considered by the Society as sufficient samples of the bulk of his logic. In

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our Report, p. 13, we contended that a revised edition of all the Public General Acts now in force was not a work which could be executed by private enterprise, and we gave two reasons for arriving at this conclusion:-First, that no private publisher had ever yet attempted to bring out such an edition; and, next, that an edition coming from a private press could not be regarded as an authorized edition, and would therefore be comparatively useless. Mr. Ker takes no notice whatever of the second reason assigned, but he really seems to imagine that he has successfully answered the first by asserting, "that private enterprise has undertaken, and repeatedly, the publication of selections, more or less copious, of the laws now in force." He then cites Evans's "Collection of Statutes connected with the General Administration of the Law," and Chitty's "Collection of Statutes of Practical Utility ;" and he adds, that "almost every treatise on a particular branch of the Statute Law contains a collection of the statutes, which a person, inquiring into that branch, would wish to refer to."

Precisely the same fallacy will be found at p. 2 of the Letter. In our Report, we had censured Mr. Ker for employing one of his subordinates in the preparation of a digest of the whole Statute and Common Law relating to Distresses for Rent; and he meets this objection by gravely announcing, that "it was not new to introduce parts of the Common Law, or to make amendments of the Common Law in a Consolidation Bill."

But perhaps the most remarkable passage in Mr. Ker's Letter remains to be noticed. At p. 8 of our Report the following sentence occurs:- "The Statute Book at present consists of forty ponderous quarto volumes, each volume on an average containing about a thousand closely-printed pages." This seems to be a harmless mode of expression, which, inasmuch as the edition of the statutes referred to does not contain at full length every public Act that has passed, rather understates than overstates the fact. But Mr. Ker is evidently much shocked at what he is pleased to call "this fallacious mode of expression." "What," says he, "is meant by the Statute Book?' There is no such work known to the law." And a little further on he

adds:"It may or may not be advisable that a new edition of

the statutes actually in force should be prepared at the public expense; but, at any rate, the bulk of these forty volumes is a matter entirely beside the question, and ought never to be mentioned by persons who wish to appeal to reason, and think it unfair to use arguments which owe all their effect to the ignorance or thoughtlessness of their audience."

In answer to this lecture on the dishonesty of using sophistical reasoning,—a lecture, be it observed, which comes with no peculiar grace from one who has made the statements and employed the arguments adverted to in our previous observations, we shall content ourselves with adopting Mr. Ker's formula of defence, and merely observe, that if we have been in error, we have erred in good company, or at any rate in that of the learned commissioner. Mr. Ker asks, with surprise, "What is meant by the Statute Book?" and we ask, with surprise, what the questioner means by asking this question, when he himself, in his Report of July, 1835, has used the same expression at least twenty times,-when, in his letter to the Chancellor, of the 20th of May, 1853, he states in one place, that “Mr. Anstey and Mr. Rogers expect to have completed the revision of the whole Statute Book before the end of the present session;" and, in another, that his object is to remove "useless matter from the Statute Book," and when, in each of his Reports, dated respectively August, 1853; January, 1854; May, 1854; and July, 1855, the same obnoxious phraseology is not once or twice, but repeatedly, employed? But, possibly, Mr. Ker may contend that he does not so much complain of the use of the term "Statute Book," as of the reference to "the bulk of the forty volumes." Is this so? We shall see, if we turn to the Report of the Commissioners on the Consolidation of the Statute Law, which was presented to Parliament in 1835. This Report is signed by Mr. Bellenden Ker, and we have his own authority for stating-first, that he took an active part in drawing it up (see p. 3 of Rep., 27th Jan. 1854); and, next, that he owes his present position solely to the fact of his having been so engaged (see p. 4 of Letter). We are therefore fully justified in assuming that he must have sanctioned, if he did not actually write, the following passage, which we quote

from p. 11 of the Report :-" The Statute Law is rendered less accessible by its now extraordinary bulk, the result of an accumulation of enactments during the space of more than six centuries, without any effectual systematic effort to reduce the aggregate by a general consolidation; so that the number of public statutes now in force, together with many expired and repealed statutes and enactments at present printed in the collections in common use, occupy not fewer than thirty closely-printed quarto volumes, containing from 600 to 1,200 pages each, and costing from 30l. to 401." The Report then goes on to observe, in the same and the following page, that "the Statute Book is further encumbered with numerous obsolete provisions;" "that the Statute Book abounds with enactments relating to particular classes," &c.; "that numerous instances of neglect of economy in the wording of statutes give them a considerable degree of importance by materially increasing the size of the Statute Book ;" and that "the expurgation which we recommend would reduce the Statute Book to one-fifth of its present size."

It only remains for us to state that we cordially concur in every word contained in two paragraphs of Mr. Ker's letter. In the one passage he naïvely remarks, "If the work were again to be done, I do not think, notwithstanding the observations made in the Report of your Committee, I could do better;" and in the other, he very properly describes his answer to our comments on his conduct as a few hasty observations."

We observe that, in a note appended to Mr. Ker's letter, he makes some strictures on a Bill "for the further Relief of the Subject from Penalties and Disabilities touching Religion and Religious Worship," which was brought into the House of Lords last year by Lord Brougham. It appears that the intention was to repeal by this Bill ninety-nine statutes, and Mr. Ker asserts, that although the measure was carefully prepared by three able lawyers, it was open, among other objections, to this one, viz. that out of the ninety-nine Acts proposed to be repealed, "seven had been already expressly repealed,