PREFACE

TO THE FIRST EDITION.

THE materials of which the present Index is composed have been in course of compilation for several years. Their collection originated in the difficulty which not only every student, but every practitioner of the law, has to encounter-the difficulty of turning readily to the statute law on any given subject, and the uncertainty, when any particular act is under his notice, whether its provisions may not have been repealed or modified by later enactments. It was to overcome, for myself, this difficulty that the collection of the materials embodied in the following pages was undertaken. By yearly additions to those materials, a clue to the statute law had been obtained, and carried down to the present time; and having found the clue useful to myself, I have been induced to offer it to the notice of the Profession.

In remodelling and revising for the press, it has been my aim to give a reference to every act, now in force, affecting the general administration of justice, or the practice of the law, or otherwise possessed of general interest; and at the same time to keep the work within a compass which should allow of great facility of reference. It may serve to elucidate the plan of the work, if I here state the means by which I have endeavoured to effect this object.

One, and the principal, means by which the materials have been condensed into so small a compass has been the making of the book an Index, not to THE STATUTES, but to THE PRESENT STATUTE LAW. It were difficult to estimate the extent to which the observance of this distinction has reduced the bulk of the Work, without, as I think, diminishing its utility. A long array, under nearly every head, of all the acts, past and

present, on the subject to which it refers, might, no doubt, occasionally be found useful, but I am satisfied that such an overloading of a mere Index, by the intermixture of extinct and existing laws, would from its tendency to confuse, more than counterbalance the occasional advantage. With some exceptions, therefore, the statutes or parts of statutes which have been repealed, have not been noticed. The exceptions are cases where laws, although repealed, still possess some lasting interest. An example on each side will illustrate the distinction. In Criminal Law, for instance, the repealed statutes are of no import to the practitioner of the present day, and have therefore generally been omitted-while repealed laws relating to Real Property still affect titles, and have been, on that account, retained. In a few instances, too, references have been given to statutes no longer in force, either on the ground of the historical interest they possess, or because they show the progress of the law to its present state. Under the head PARLIAMENT, for example, are several acts of the former, and under the head ARREST, some of the latter class. Under every title, however, whether the repealed statutes are included or not, care has been taken so to frame the references that the existing law on the subject may be readily traced.

Another great help to .conciseness has been the omission, with very few exceptions, of the statutes which relate exclusively to Scotland or Ireland. The Index having been intended as a compendium of English statute law, and with a view to the requirements of an English practice, it was felt that the acts relating to the other portions of the United Kingdom would be a needless incumbrance, and ought to be omitted. For the same reason, but few of the statutes relating to the Colonies have been noticed. Such of the English statutes, too, as are but of local or personal application, although printed among the Public General Statutes, have been excluded.

A third and material retrenchment has been the omission, with some exceptions, of the statutes which concern, not the public generally, but particular classes only. The laws for regulating various branches of manufacture, and particular trades, and the minute provisions of the Excise laws, as applicable to the different subjects of Excise regulations, are ex

amples of this class. There are some statutes, however, which although referring immediately to particular branches of industry, yet connect themselves closely with the ordinary concerns of life, and to such, by way of exception, a reference has been given. The acts under the titles BREAD, ALEHOUSES, BUILDING, &c., are instances of this kind. The legislation affecting a few other particular avocations has involved in its discussion some of the great questions of humanity; and the statutes on those subjects-from the interest they thus possess -have been included. I allude to the acts under the heads

FACTORIES, CHIMNEY SWEEPERS, COLLIERIES, &c. To use the words of Sir William Evans, in the Preface to his valuable Collection of Statutes-and which are equally applicable to such a Work as the present-"in forming a collection of this kind, "it is difficult to fix the precise limits between the acts which "it would be desirable to admit, and those which it is proper "to exclude, and the decision must necessarily involve a certain "degree of arbitrary discretion, upon which no two judgments "would exactly coincide; but upon the great majority of cases "there will, probably, not be any material difference of opinion; " and I hope it will not be found, upon a review of the Tables "of Contents, that many acts of general practical utility have "been omitted, or that the bulk of the Work has been much "increased by those which could have been conveniently dispensed with." I may add that the range of subjects admitted into the present Index is considerably wider than that adopted by Sir William Evans, and his learned Editors, in the work to which I have alluded. It may also be proper to observe that no acts which otherwise fell within the scope of the present Work have been excluded, on the ground merely that they have become obsolete.

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Having indicated thus much with regard to the materials which have been employed, I may be permitted to say a few words on the method in which those materials have been disposed.

The first object at which I have aimed is to make the book an Index, not of dry words merely, but of subjects, by such a disposition of the matter as that, either by direct notices or by references to other titles, each head should afford a clue to the

In

entire existing statute law affecting the particular subject. this, as in a former particular, a degree of arbitrary discretion is necessarily involved, but I trust the arrangement of subjects will be sufficiently intelligible, and that most of the matter will be found in the place or places where an English lawyer would be most likely to look for it.

Next to the arrangement of the matter came the question, with what degree of particularity it would be proper to detail it. On this point it was difficult to act upon any unvarying rule. It will be remembered that the Work is but an Index, and that (compared with the bulk of the statute book from which it has been extracted), on the most concise scale. To have given an epitome of the statute law, on such a scale, would have been impossible, and, if possible, would have been comparatively useless. No mere epitome of an act of Parliament can be relied on, and on every important occasion reference must necessarily be had to the act itself. Still it has been felt that, for many purposes, details going somewhat beyond a naked reference to each statute might be usefully employed. With more or less particularity therefore, according to the importance of the subject, or its capability of being so handled, such short details have been given; and in almost every case in which the effect of an enactment could be stated in a few words, it has been so stated. I believe it will be found that for many purposes the Work may thus be used as a legal handbook, without the necessity of referring to the statute book itself. The plan adopted with regard to details has led, in some instances, to what may possibly be regarded as an anomaly, and which it may therefore be well to explain. It will be best illustrated by an example. Under the head TURNPIKES, the notice of the last General Turnpike Act, with its lengthy and important provisions, occupies a space of but two lines, while some of the subsequent and much shorter acts by which it is amended, are given at greater length, by the introduction of particulars. The cause of this apparent anomaly is simply this. The General Turnpike Act is so long, and its provisions so multifarious, that it were vain to attempt to abridge it, but many of the later acts are such as to allow of their design being indicated in a few words. And however unseemly at the first glance, it

may be doubtful whether the arrangement thus necessitated be not on the whole the most convenient. The practitioner, or the student, who needs to refer to the provisions of the General Turnpike Act, must of necessity examine the act itself as the foundation of the present law, and for that purpose a mere clue to the statute is sufficient. But the acts by which the law relating to Turnpikes has been since, in some way or other, altered, are no less than fifty; and it may be a great convenience to the student to see not merely where those acts may be found, but to have the particular object of each, wherever practicable, indicated. He may be seeking information on a single point, and by the help of such an indication, it may suffice to examine five of the subsequent statutes instead of the fifty. What is here said of the Turnpike Acts is only an example-there are numerous other instances in which the same remarks would apply. The considerations thus suggested were decisive of the general plan which has been pursued, namely, wherever it was practicable, and consistent with the proposed limits of the work, to state shortly what the law is; in all other cases to show, by a simple reference, where the law may be found.

The statute law of this country is not in a creditable state. It bears the plainest marks of hasty and ill-considered legislation, it is extremely inartificial, and has become involved to a most inconvenient degree; but I question whether, after all, at any time during the last thirty years, the body of existing statute law has been in a much narrower compass than now. Session after session indeed has added its volume to the already overgrown mass, but session after session has also, by the process of repeal and consolidation, struck off something that was cumbersome and superfluous from that mass. The extent to which this has been carried is perhaps scarcely appreciable, except by those whose pursuits have led to a very close examination of the statute book. The consolidation of the Jury Laws, and the Bankrupt Law, in 1825, of different sections of the Criminal Law in 1827 and 1828, of the Post Office Laws in 1837, and the repeated consolidations of the laws of Customs, Shipping, and Navigation, may be mentioned as examples, in which, by direct appeal, innumerable old and confused enact