THE LORD CHANCELLOR,in presenting a Bill for the Revision of the Statutes from the Commencement to the End of the Reign of Edward the Third, said, their Lordships were aware that some time antecedent to the year 1859 a Commission was issued for the purpose of consolidating the statute law. He could not say that the proceedings of that Commission had met with general approbation, or that they had done much to accomplish their object. The Commission was not renewed in 1859, 1836 in consequence of an adverse vote of the House of Commons, and when the present Government came into office it was necessary to consider what steps should be taken in the circumstances. It appeared to the late Lord Chancellor and to himself that the proper course was to ascertain what the statute law really consisted of, before they proceeded to the introduction of any consolidating measure. They determined, therefore, to appoint certain gentlemen of great ability and industry to proceed with a revision of the statute law. These gentlemen had already proceeded in the task with a revision of the statute book from the beginning of the reign of George III. down to the present time, and a Bill, embodying the results of that revision was passed in their Lordships' House early in the present Session; and, having also passed through the other House, was now again before their Lordships. The statutes thus swept out of the statute book had become unnecessary from various causes. Many of them had been expressly repealed. Others had fallen into desuetude from the circumstance that there was no longer any subject matter on which they could operate. There was another class of statutes which were repealed in general terms—that was to say, subsequent enactments had declared that all preceding enactments inconsistent with the provisions there enacted were repealed; there were others which were in effect repealed because, although there were no words in subsequent enactments which specially or generally repealed them, yet they—those subsequent statutes—enacted what was inconsistent with and repugnant to the olden statutes. Other statutes were not repealed, but superseded by subsequent Acts introducing new modes of dealing with the matters. Other statutes referred to customs that had since passed away, and were, consequently, inoperative. All those classes of Bills were as completely superseded as if they had been actually repealed; but they could not be omitted from the statute book without an Act of Parliament, and that authority as to one portion of the statute book was given in the Bill which, as he said, passed their Lordships' House early in the Session. He wished, however, that the present Session should not pass without proceeding one step farther, and accordingly he had prepared a Bill, which he would now lay on their Lordships' Table in order that it might he maturely considered during the recess — a 1837 Bill for revising the statutes from the earliest times to the end of the reign of Edward III. The Bill proceeded on the same principle of revision as that he had already described with regard to the statutes of George III. and downwards, and the effect of this measure, if it were sanctioned by Parliament, would be to reduce the present bulky volume containing these earlier statutes to one-tenth of its present size, and he anticipated, as this work went on, to reduce the volumes containing the statutes in a still greater degree.
§ Bill presented, and read 1a.