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2ndly. The collection consists of Public Statutes only.

One or two Acts, such as the Chatham Lands Purchase Act, 1857 (20 & 21 Vict. c. 30.), of an essentially local character, have been inserted in the work on account of their direct reference to the Admiralty; but even of these Acts, all with one possible exception, are technically Public Statutes, and are published among the Public Acts of the year to which they each belong. The exclusion of Local Acts has been facilitated by the fact that most of the Acts of this character which are inserted or referred to in the earlier collections of Admiralty Statutes have reference to harbours or rivers, matters with which the Admiralty have, I conceive, since 1862 had little concern.

The desire to exclude local enactments and to save space has led me to omit the Derwentwater Estate Acts. These Acts are, as regards the Admiralty, of the nature of title deeds, and will probably always be at hand in the office for reference when any question arises with regard to the Derwentwater property. The Admiralty further have, as I am informed, already parted with a great part of the Derwentwater estates. There would, therefore, it seems to me, be little practical gain in allowing these Acts to crowd a collection, which is of necessity bulky enough, and ought, if possible, to be restricted within the limits of a convenient size.

3rdly. All enactments are as a rule excluded from the present collection, which do not directly concern either the Admiralty or the Navy.

Hence, enactments which concern the Court of Admiralty are in general excluded, except in so far as their provisions may confer powers upon the Admiralty (e.g., of sanctioning appointments); so too, as a rule, I exclude Acts, such as 13 Ric. II. stat. 1. c. 5., relating to the criminal jurisdiction of the Admiralty, since such enactments, though nominally referring to the Admiralty, form in reality part of the criminal law.

The mass of Fishery Acts, commencing with 13 Geo. I. c. 30., and coming down to 36 & 37 Vict. c. 13., have also for similar reasons been, after some hesitation on my part, omitted. They are very numerous, their bulk is considerable, and their provisions do not, as a rule, directly refer either to the Admiralty or to the Naval service. Naval officers, moreover, when acting in furtherance of the fishery laws, are, as I am informed, supplied with the special Act or Acts on which their authority depends. I have, therefore, thought it best to omit

almost the whole of these statutes. One or two sections of the Fishery Acts under which the Admiralty appear still to possess powers of appointment are inserted, as are also 59 Geo. III. c. 38. and the Sea Fisheries Act, 1868 (30 & 31 Vict. c. 45.) The two latter Acts claim a place in the collection, because they regulate and refer to the conduct of naval officers in respect of the Newfoundland and French Fisheries.

Even when it has been determined that an Act should form part of the collection, I have endeavoured to insert only those portions of it which relate to the topics with which the book is concerned; thus, to take one example, some sections only of the Customs Consolidation Act, 1853, will be found in this work. The greater part of the Act is omitted as irrelevant. To decide what parts of an Act can be safely omitted is a matter of considerable delicacy. No portion of a statute has been omitted without deliberation, but I have preferred the risk of occasional mistakes to the certain evil of swelling the book with useless and irrelevant matter.

. (a)

4thly. The collection is intended to contain all enactments actually in force which form part of the Naval law of the country; and a main feature of the work consists in its presenting in one volume the mass of comparatively recent legislation on Naval subjects.

In one respect perfect theoretical completeness has not been attained, since it has not been found practicable to include in the volume all enactments which are incorporated by reference into Admiralty Statutes. Such incorporated provisions ought in theory to have appeared in the work, since they form part of the Act with which they are incorporated, but the practical difficulty, not to say impossibility, of their insertion, may be understood from the fact that it would have involved the inclusion in the collection of the greater part of the Lands Clauses Acts, and of the Railway Clauses Consolidation Acts.

A word of explanation may be useful as to two minor points, the nature of the notes contained in the collection, and the means taken to call attention to the repeal of parts of the Acts inserted in it.

(a) The portion omitted refers to the Merchant Shipping Acts, and is not applicable to the present edition.

When I took the present work in hand I did so on the understanding that I was not expected to provide illustrative or explanatory notes; I have, therefore, made no attempt to produce an annotated edition of the Admiralty Statutes. The notes which appear in my collection are simply notes of reference; they are intended to show what are the Acts or sections which, though scattered in different parts of the work, ought to be read together. Occasionally they contain a reference to some Act, which, though not in the collection, is referred to by the statute annotated.

The following means have been taken to call attention to repeals:

A line of asterisks is always intended to mark a repeal. Wherever such asterisks occur they signify that the part which precedes or follows them up or down to the next portion (if any) of the Act in print is repealed.

Thus the asterisks at the commencement of an Act, e.g., 17 Geo. II. c. 40., signify that all the preceding sections are repealed. Asterisks at the end.of an Act, e.g., 5 & 6 Edw. VI. c. 16., show that the whole remainder of the Act after the section which precedes the asterisks is repealed. Asterisks between two sections, e.g., sections 2 and 4 of 9 Will. III. c. 41., show that the intermediate portion (in this case section 3) is repealed. So when asterisks occur in the midst of a section they signify that the part thus marked is repealed.

Where a section or portion of an Act is omitted, though not repealed, the omission is not marked by asterisks. Thus, in 16 & 17 Vict. c. 107., the sections between sections 3 and 7 are omitted, but as they are not repealed, no asterisks are inserted.

Some difficulty occurs where consecutive portions of an Act are omitted, some sections only of which are repealed. In such a case no asterisks are inserted; to insert them would suggest that the whole of the omitted portions were repealed. The result is that where part of an Act is omitted and no asterisks appear, as, for example, at p. 190 (a), where 16 & 17 Vict. c. 107. s. 7. is immediately followed in the collection by section 47.,

(a) That is, p. 190 of the first edition. Part of the statute, commencing with s. 313, will be found in this edition at p. 147, and will still serve for an example of what it was cited to illustrate. Much of the statute preceding s. 313 has been repealed since the first edition was issued by 39 & 40 Vict. c. 36. s. 288, but some of the sections are still in force, and therefore no asterisks are used to denote the repeal.

all that the reader can infer is, that certainly some part, and possibly the whole, of the intermediate omitted portion is not repealed.

The statutes are arranged in chronological order.

They are preceded by a chronological table of the Acts contained in this volume, which also shows whether the whole or a part, and if a part only what part, of each statute is inserted.

They are followed by an index, for aid in the preparation of which I owe my best thanks to my friend Mr. Leybourn Goddard, of the Temple.

The table and the index will, I trust, add to the practical utility of the collection. That the work is not without its defects I am well aware, but I hope it may on the whole be found to be suitable for the purposes for which it has been composed.

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To the Secretary,
The Admiralty,

Whitehall.

I remain,

Your obedient servant,

A. V. DICEY.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION.

THIS work constitutes a second edition of the collection of Admiralty Statutes published in 1875; it is composed on the principles and plan adopted in that collection, and for these the reader is referred to the preface to the first edition.

In one respect only the edition of 1886 differs in principle from the collection of 1875. In the earlier edition the Merchant Shipping Acts were inserted en bloc; in this edition only those portions of the Merchant Shipping Acts appear which directly or indirectly concern either the Admiralty or the Navy. In deter-> mining what portions of the Merchant Shipping Acts ought to form part of this collection, the principle adopted has been to insert every enactment which directly refers either to the Admiralty or the Royal Navy, and also every enactment which is prominently referred to in the official instructions issued to naval officers. It is almost impossible that such a selection should never err by way either of excess or defect. It is hoped, however, that no grave error will be found to have been committed. The exclusion from the collection of parts of the Merchant Shipping Acts which clearly do not bear upon Naval affairs has, together with the repeals which have taken place since 1874, had one undoubtedly good effect; it has greatly reduced the bulk of this collection. The work contains all the enactments coming within its scope which have been passed between the end of 1874 and the end of 1875; but it is less by more than a hundred pages than the edition of 1875.

A. V. DICEY.

J. LEYBOURN GODDARD.

The Temple,

September 1886.

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