Sport Attime 24. Feb 1833

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AN announcement has been made within the past week, whereat many, within Parliament and without, have uttered loud felicitations. We allude to the declaration of the Lord Chancellor as to the Codification of the Statute Law. While we yield to none in the conviction of the importance of clearness and certainty being the chracteristics of the law of any country that would be prosperous, it does not appear to us that the true considerations that affect this question have been entertained, either by the Lord Chancellor himself, or by those who have seized the opportunity for felicitating themselves and their countrymen upon a great prospective boon. We would remark, at the outset, upon the singular and striking inconsistency that there is, patent to every mind that is in the habit of considering such important questions, between this vaunted pretence at an intention of codification, and the fact that Parliament goes on, year by year, adding its brace of hundred new statutes to the Statute-book; and that the first complaint we hear of any Ministry is, that it has done so little in the way of legislation in any given afo. If there were any reality or sincerity in this desire for and conviction of the benefit of codification, the first step would certainly be, for Parliament to announce that it had made laws enough, and that it did not conceive it to be a part of its necessary business to make, every year, a new heavy volume of statutes. It is self-evident that, until the time arrives that Parliament is prepared to make such a declaration, or the public attains so much good sense as to insist on the tacit action which such a declaration implies, all pretences at codification are mere empty vapour. They neither have nor can have any meaning whatever. shall be none the better for a codified system in 1853, if 1863 is to see ten huge miscellaneous volumes added as an apendix to the code.

We

This observation, which we make merely in limine, must be felt by every one at all conversant with the subject to be a fundamental one. For what are the facts? It is only of late years that the Statute-book has assumed those unwieldy proportions that make it truly a burthen. It is only of late years that Parliament has taken to the absurd system of piling Pelion upon Ossa, in the shape of annual crude heaps of statutes, to which the description more truly applies than ever to its prototype :

"Monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, cui lumen ademptum."

Two centuries ago the whole statute law was comprised in a small pocket volume. A century ago it was still within the size of a handy volume. It was the Georgean era that began the mischief. That mischief has been fruitful source of many others; and, not least, of that pernicious temper of our times which induces men to be ever running to Parliament for empirical aid upon every trifling occasion, instead of putting their own shoulders to the wheel, and accomplishing the end sought by the legitimate means within their own grasp. The fact is, that the absence, now-a-days, of that familiarity with the principles of the laws and constitution of their country which used to be held an essential qualification for a member of the Legislature, makes men ready to forward any tinkering bill that is proposed, as a remedy for any fancied evil, without stopping to look carefully at the state of the law as it now is, and at the means which it actually affords. It is clear that, no sooner shall the existing statute

law be codified, than it will be a dead letter. It will always be far less trouble to a member catering for popularity, and more gratifying to his vanity, to bring in a new bill, than it will be to learn the old law and refer his constituents to it.

Plenty of digests of the statute law do at this moment exist. There is not, in reality, the slightest inconvenience felt on this score. These digests, depending as they do upon their intrinsic accuracy and merit, and not on any adventitious advantage, are far more reliable than will be any digest made under the sanction of the Lord Chancellor, or of any one else in authority. If we want a digest, it is of judge-made law, and not of statute law; and to the consideration of this want we shall probably take another occasion of alluding.

But, apart from the consideration thus advanced, there is another and most important one which cannot be too earnestly impressed on every one who values free institutions. A codification means, if it means anything, that some individual mind shall cut and carve at the statute law as it now exists; and, culling what he thinks best, in such shape as he thinks best, shall reject the remainder, and give out the whole result in such a manner as happens to suit his own idiosyncracy. It matters not that particular departments may be given to different hands. The only consequence of this will be that, instead of the idiosyncracy of one mind, the contradictions of several will be found in the codified system. Codification, in fact, is only another name for despotism. Well and significantly are the words Napoleon" coupled together.

Code

That this is not too strong language will be obvious when the actual conditions, necessarily present, are considered. A country that has seen the existence but of a few lustrums may rationally talk of codification. Its statutes have all originated within a generation. All are easily known, in all their applications; and an understanding assent may be given to the whole when systematized to a code. But it is very different when a nation has existed for fourteen centuries, as England has done, and when its Statute-book itself stretches back through more than

six hundred years. That Statute-book constitutes, in a most important aspect, its history. It is proverbial how difficult it is to write an impartial history. Who will, in our time, acknowledge Hume as the fair historian of England? And to whom shall we commit the task of trimming out a statutebook that has been the growth and product of the minds of generations; and which bears, recorded within it, the adaptations suitable to an infinite variety of circumstances? The fashions of time change. The opinions of to-day are not those of yesterday, and will not be accepted as those of tomorrow. But it is a good thing sometimes to look back upon past conditions and adaptations, and see if, in the past revolutions of time, nothing useful to ourselves can be found. Who shall tell us that it is the work of a free nation or of an enlightened time, to attempt, in this year 1853, to fix one arbitrary standard, and to point men to one pedantic code as that which alone is to be recognized as English law? We rejoice, rather, to know that there has breathed, in past times, a spirit of practical liberty through much of our legislation, the value of which is now beginning to be felt again, after it has been long ignored, and which it needs but earnest men to giv life and action to again.