PASSED DURING THE YEARS ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY-SEVEN.
AND ONE THOUSAND EIGHT HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT:

TO WHICH ARE ADDED,

CERTAIN FORMER ACTS WHICH HAVE NOT BEEN REVISED.

PRINTED AND PUBLISHED UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE REVISERS,
APPOINTED FOR THAT PURPOSE.

CONTAINING THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION; THE CONSTITUTIONS OF THE UNITED
STATES, AND OF THIS STATE, WITH THE AMENDMENTS THERETO; THE FIRST PART
OF THE REVISED STATUTES, (EXCEPT A PORTION OF CHAPTER II.;) AND THE
FIRST, SECOND, THIRD AND FOURTH CHAPTERS OF THE SECOND PART.

ALBANY:

PRINTED BY PACKARD AND VAN BENTHUYSEN.

1829.

L. S.

Northern District of New-York, to wit:

Be it remembered, That on the thirty-first day of December, in the fifty-third year of the Independence of the United States of America, A. D. 1828, AZÁRIAH C. FLAGG, Secreta ry of State of the State of New-York, &c. of the said District, hath deposited in this Office the title of a Book, the right whereof he claims as proprietor, in trust for the benefit of the People of the State of New-York, &c. in the words following, to wit:

"The Revised Statutes of the State of New-York, passed during the years one thousand eight hundred and twenty-seven, and one thousand eight hundred and twenty-eight: to which are added, certain former acts which have not been revised. Printed and published under the direction of the Revisers, appointed for that purpose. In three volumes."

In conformity to the act of the Congress of the United States, entitled "An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned;" and also to the act entitled, "An act supplementary to an act, entitled 'An act for the encouragement of learning, by securing the copies of maps, charts, and books, to the authors and proprietors of such copies, during the times therein mentioned,' and extending the benefits thereof to the arts of designing, engraving and etching historical and other prints."

R. R. LANSING,

Clerk of the Dist. Court of the United States for the Northern Dist. of New-York.

PREFACE.

THE Volumes now presented to the public, will be found to comprise all the acts, now in force, passed by the Legislature of this state; except those of a merely private nature, those relating to cities, villages, and monied and other corporations, and some other special and local statutes.

The first and second volumes contain the REVISED STATUTES passed during the years 1827 and 1828, with the exception of three Titles of Chapter II. of the First Part. These Titles, comprising a description of the several counties, towns and cities in the state, will be found in the third volume, which will also contain various laws not revised, but chiefly local or special, and lists of all other statutes of every description, now in force, together with various other matters which will be indicated by the table of contents prefixed to the volume. An appendix will be added to that volume, consisting of a collection of colonial and other acts, which though obsolete or repealed, must be often referred to in the deduction of titles to real property, and which are now scattered in various editions of the laws that are not accessible to the public.

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The public statutes of this state, in force at the time of this revision, constitute the basis of the work, and have generally been incorporated in it, although their original form has seldom been preserved. For the purpose of simplifying their language, supplying their omissions, and remedying other defects; and above all, of presenting them in the tematic arrangement which was the great object of the legislature, it became indispensible to break up their long and sometimes complicated sections to separate those provisions which related to any particular topic, from others with which they were connected-and to write anew every section contained in the Revised Statutes.

Several of the former statutes having been expressly or impliedly ab rogated by the legislature, are wholly omitted. Those which have been retained and consolidated in this work, have been materially modified. Their details have been perfected; they have been conformed in express terms, to the construction given to them by the decisions of our courts; and in many cases new provisions have been introduced, essentially changing their principles. In numerous instances, also, the rules of the common law have been reduced to a written text, and inserted VOL. I. A

in their proper place in connexion with the statutory provisions on the subject to which they relate; whilst in other instances those rules have been enlarged, modified or varied, the more fully to conform them to the nature of our government, and the habits and exigencies of the people.

It is also proper to apprize the reader, that he is not to expect in this work, all the law upon the subjects treated of in the Revised Statutes. The Titles and Articles enumerated in the Analysis prefixed to the first volume, may be said to exhibit an outline, nearly perfect, of the principal heads of the common as well as the statute law; whilst the statutory provisions concerning many of them, form but a small portion of our law upon the given subject.

It will be perceived that various provisions of the constitutions of this state and of the United States, have been incorporated in the statutes relating to the same subjects. These constitutional provisions are uniformly inserted in a declaratory form.

Throughout the work, references will be found to the statutes heretofore passed, containing provisions analogous to those in the Revised Statutes. But it must not be inferred from any such reference, that the former statute has been literally copied, or even substantially adopted. On the contrary, whenever a provision on the same subject could be found in a former statute, it has been invariably referred to, for the purpose of enabling the reader to ascertain the prior law; though in many cases that law is either only partially retained, or is wholly abrogated, or a principle directly the reverse is adopted, by the provision to which the reference is subjoined. In most cases a reference is added to each section, indicating the particular part of the former statute upon which the section is founded. But where a chapter, title, or article, or several sections, are founded upon a single act, that act, only, has sometimes been referred to, without designating its particular parts. With these exceptions, those sections of the Revised Statutes to which no references are subjoined, will generally be found to be entirely new as statutory provisions.

In making these references the following abbreviations have been used: 1 R. L. or 2 R. L. refer to the Revised Laws of 1813, published in two volumes, by the Revisers, Messrs. VAN NESS and WOODWORTH. The Session Laws of 1813, and of the subsequent sessions to 1828 inclusive, are referred to by the years in which they were passed; and the references are in all cases to the editions published by the state printer.

The work was prepared in detached parts, and was passed by two different legislatures. Hence a few provisions will be found in the earlier parts, sometimes apparently and sometimes really, incongruous with others contained in the parts last enacted; and expressions will sometimes be met with, referring to some rule of common or statute law, which is subsequently modified or abrogated. In some of these cases, the provisions first adopted, were left unaltered, for the purpose of protecting rights founded upon existing laws, or of continuing remedies and proceedings already commenced.

In the "act concerning the Revised Statutes," and in the "act to repeal certain acts and parts of acts," both passed on the 10th of December 1828, and published in the third volume, will be found important rules of construction controlling the whole revision, and applicable more particularly,

1. To the effect of certain terms used in the Revised Statutes: 2. To those provisions which may be repugnant: and,

3. To the cases where statutes not revised nor repealed, refer to a statute which has been repealed or revised, or to a rule of law which has been abrogated or modified.

To aid in understanding the plan and arrangement of the work, and to furnish easy and accurate references to its several parts, chapters, titles, articles and sections, the following means have been provided:

1. To the first volume is prefixed a general table of contents, in the form of a complete analysis of the Four Parts; with references to those pages of the first volume, at which the chapters, titles and articles contained therein, severally commence :

2. To each chapter, is prefixed an analysis of its several titles:

3. To each title, is prefixed an analysis of its several articles :

4. At the head of each article, is placed a summary of the contents of each section; and where a title is not divided into articles, the like summary is placed at the head of the title :

5. A brief note of the subject matter of each section, has been placed in the margin :

6. An Index is added to the first volume, presenting in alphabetical order, the several subjects treated of in the articles, titles and chapters contained in that volume. This Index will not give the contents of the several sections; but as it will refer to the place, in the body of the work, where these contents are given, it is believed that the reader will thus be enabled, without difficulty, to turn to any provision contained in the volume: