The LORD CHANCELLOR, having laid upon the table of the House the Report of Mr. Bellenden Ker on the proceedings of the Board for the Revision of the Statute Law, said, he regretted extremely that it had not been in his power to have submitted that report at an earlier period of the Session to their Lordships' notice:—the directions which he had thought it his duty to give to those gentlemen who composed that Commission had, however, prevented him from taking that course. Those directions were, that the gentlemen in question should continue their labours until within a short time of the close of 1812 the Session, and should then make their report to him in order that that report might be laid upon the table of the House, and immediately afterwards printed and placed in their Lordships' hands. The Commissioners had acted in accordance with those instructions, and as each noble Lord would have an opportunity before long of examining the document in which the result of their investigations was contained, he should not deem it necessary to enter into any very detailed statement with reference to the subject of their inquiry. He was, however, of opinion that it was due to their Lordships, as well as to those gentlemen who had devoted so much of their time and labour to that subject, to state very briefly some of the proceedings with reference to it which had within the last three or four months taken place. Their Lordships would recollect that at an early period of the present Session he had declared that it was his intention to endeavour to effect the consolidation—if not of the entire—at all events of a considerable portion of our Statute law. In order that he might be enabled to accomplish that object, the course which he had chalked out for himself had been to apply, in the first instance, to Mr. Bellenden Ker, who was, at least for all practical purposes, the only surviving member of the Commission which had been appointed by Lord Brougham to effect a consolidation of both the Statute and the Criminal law. That Commission had proceeded with the Criminal but not with the Statute law, and they had made one report on the subject. He had a conference with Mr. Ker, and it appeared to him (the Lord Chancellor) that the best step that could be taken was to induce that gentleman to continue his services as a Commissioner for the consolidation of the Statute Law, while he should have to assist him in the discharge of his duties four such gentlemen as might appear to be best qualified for the task. Upon the whole, the entire proceeding must be regarded as to a great extent experimental, and he had not therefore deemed it expedient to protract beyond a single year the engagement of the Commission, lest it should turn out that their labours could not be directed to any useful end, or should fail in the accomplishment of the object which he had in view. He accordingly retained four able gentlemen to be the other members of the Commission for one year. These gentlemen had had an interview with him at his house towards 1813 the close of last March, and they had entered into certain arrangements as to the course they should pursue. They had agreed in the first place that it was of importance that they should ascertain what the statutes were that remained to be consolidated. Their Lordships were aware that there were in existence some forty quarto volumes, printed very closely, which were designated by the uninviting title of the Statutes at Large. Previous, however, to entering upon the consolidation of so extensive a body of laws, he had satisfied himself that it was fallacious to imagine that the Commissioners would have to deal with the entire body of the statutes which it embraced. In truth, the forty volumes consisted not alone of such statutes as were at the present day in force, but of innumerable other statutes, some of which had been repealed, others had become obsolete; and some of which also had been enacted merely for temporary or local purposes. Statutes of that nature it had not been his object to attempt to consolidate; and, in fact, his proposition had only related to those statutes which were of a general or public character. The Commissioners had had very great facilities for dealing successfully with that proposition, because they had the advantage of having before them the report of a former Commission upon the same subject, which came down to the reign of Queen Anne, to guide them in their investigation. To two of the gentlemen whom he had appointed, Mr. Anstey and Mr. Rogers, the task had been committed of looking over the entire of the statutes, and the result of their inquiry was somewhat curious. It appeared that from the date of Magna Charta up to the time of the enactment of the 15 & 16 of Her present Majesty, there had been passed for the United Kingdom 16,442 public statutes. Of that number there had, however, been actually repealed 2,700, and virtually repealed by the enactment of statutes with which their existence was inconsistent, 2,600 more. In short, not to trouble their Lordships by going into detail, he should state that there remained out of the 16,442 public statutes which had been passed, only 3,900 as to which the Commissioners could not report that they were not in force at the present day. Of that number, again, 420 related to Scotland exclusively, 600 to Ireland, and 400 to the Colonies; so that those enactments being left out of the ques- 1814 tion, their Lordships would perceive that there remained somewhat less than 2,500 public statutes applicable to England and to the United Kingdom. It was to the consolidation of that particular body of laws, therefore, that the attention of the Commissioners had been mainly directed. They had to analyse the various statutes which it embraced, and to ascertain under what heads they might severally or conjointly be classed. Two of the Commissioners had taken upon them that task, and in order to test the accuracy of their investigation, the same end which they had set about accomplishing was sought to be obtained by another of the Commissioners by a different process, namely, by commencing with the consideration of such statutes as were passed in the reign of Her present Majesty, and proceeding back wards to the period at which the labours of his fellow-Commissioners had begun. Such was the nature of the instructions which had been given to Mr. Bellenden Ker, and those who had been appointed to assist him, about the end of last March. They had, at the same time, been further directed to consult together, and, if possible, to ascertain whether it would be better to take the statutes as they now stood, and to put them into several Acts, according to the subjects to which they referred, improving their language, and throwing them into a more accessible form, or to unite with the enactments upon each particular subject the common or unwritten law, which related to such particular subject. A third question had also been suggested for their consideration, namely, whether it would not be advisable to make a digest of the various statutes, pointing out at the same time such alterations and amendments in their language or construction as it might be of advantage to introduce. His instruction to them, with reference to those points, had been to take some one subject, and to effect a consolidation of all the statutes upon that subject in the three different forms to which be had just called their Lordships' attention. One of the Commissioners had, in accordance with those instructions, selected as a subject the laws relating to distress for rent, and had made digests of those laws upon each of the three given principles. Those digests formed part of the Report which he had just laid before their Lordships. Mr. Coode, also one of the Commissioners, had some years ago been connected with the Poor Law 1815 Board, and had then made great progress in framing a digest of all the laws on that subject from the time of Queen Elizabeth down to the present period. That work had been left in an incomplete state; but (he the Lord Chancellor) had suggested to Mr. Coode that such a digest would be very germane to the subject which he was now employed considering, and had requested him to finish it in order that it might form part of the Report now upon their Lordships' table. Mr. Coode had complied with that request, and the result had been the consolidation of 160 statutes under one head. He thought that such a digest must prove of very great utility, and he was sure their Lordships, when they had perused the Report, would concur with him in thinking that they had been by no means idle or forgetful of the duties which they had been called upon to discharge. Whether their Lordships or he himself should agree in all the suggestions made by the Commissioners or not, he was not at that moment prepared to say; but he felt quite sure that those gentlemen had, at all events, laid down an excellent basis for further proceedings with respect to the important subject they had been appointed to consider. With reference to the various suggestions which the Commissioners had made, he should observe, that in exercising his own discretion in adopting them or not, he was satisfied he would be taking a course at which they could take no umbrage. He had come to the conclusion that, having obtained the very useful basis which they had furnished, the next mode of proceeding would be that each of the Commissioners should take a particular subject, in which no other save Statute law was comprehended—such, for instance, as the poor-law, in which there was no common law, the revenue laws, the laws relating to public works, railways, which were all enacted by statute—and should proceed to deal with that particular subject, and to consolidate the whole of the statutes which it embraced in one concise and simple form. Having said this much, he should just beg leave to call their Lordships' attention to a circumstance suggested by the Report of the Commissioners, which was of rather a singular character. Their Lordships were aware that about eight years ago, certain Acts, intituled the Railways Clauses Consolidation Act, and the Land Clauses Consolidation Act, had been passed, their object being the consoli- 1816 dation into two several statutes of such enactments as usually found their way into almost every Railway Bill. It was a curious fact, that, taking the quarterly printed folio pages in each Railway Bill into consideration, the diminution in the amount of printed matter which had been effected by these Acts of consolidation to which he had just referred was no less than 116,000 folio pages for a single issue of the copies of the Bill. When their Lordships took into consideration the fact that those Bills had to be printed over twice before they passed through both Houses of Parliament, and that more than one-quarter of the number which were from time to time submitted to the consideration of the Legislature were finally thrown out, they might form something like a correct idea of the great expense that must have been avoided by having recourse to the Acts of consolidation to which he had called their attention. He certainly thought they ought to avail themselves of the experience which might be derived from such circumstances. They should see whether they could not adopt the same principle in a variety of other matters. Most of their Lordships were engaged in the duties of magistrates; and he did not see why the laws relating to the duties of that office should not be put into one Act. Again, there were the laws relating to the national debt. The Chancellor of the Exchequer had told him that it was troublesome beyond measure for persons engaged in matters of finance to look into the various statutes. Now, that was a state of things which it was desirable should no longer exist, and he felt perfectly confident, from the course which the proceedings of the Commissioners appointed to investigate the subject had taken, that the scheme which he had submitted to the House for the consolidation of the Statute law would be of the most essential service to the public and to the country.
§ House adjourned till To-morrow.