artfully, and have blocked up the reporting
books with tedious repetition.

This evil might, indeed, be tolerated, but one
of the consequences of this idle repetition and
endless flux of language (as, indeed, often
happens in the case of a talkative private person)
is contradiction and inconsistency. Thus, the
anxious student has his labour often encouraged
by some such discovery as this: " This doctrine
would appear to be pretty firmly established.
See Barkis v. Gamp, 6 Clup and Bard, p. 216;
Toots v. Swiveller, 3 Badg., p. 30. But see,
contra, Pumblechook v. Codlin, 26 Rudge;
and Tapley v. Chuzzlewit, 1 Pendennis and
Warrington's Reports." Here are authorities
directly clashing.

Sometimes "authority" grows up in the most
irregular fashion conceivable. A counsel is
arguing in support of his pleading, when Mr.
Justice Stareleigh, whose weak spot has always
been pleading, and is anxious to vindicate his
reputation in that direction, interposes
pleasantly:

"I am not so sure, Mr. Boshley, that if your
pleading had covered the second count, I should
have been inclined to go with you."

"MR. JUSTICE WOODCOCK.— The proper
course, after all, might have been to have
demurred generally."

"MR. JUSTICE BOYLES.—I am not so sure
that that would have avoided the difficulty."

Years after, when Boshley, Q.C., has worn
out his eyes, and worn off his hair, or is, perhaps,
enjoying premature retirement in Kensal-green,
being worn out generally by his pleadings, a
nice point arises, and we hear the voice of a
counsel quoting a valuable obiter dictum of Mr.
Justice Stareleigh, " than whom no more
distinguished lawyer ever," &c.

Already has the evil begun to excite attention,
and various schemes have been proposed in the
direction of a reform. Many of the oldest
reports are comprised in half a dozen lines,
which is a merit. But what makes the older
reports—not the oldest— of special value is the
fact that they were drawn by experienced
lawyers, who knew the law thoroughly. Now
they are the work of young barristers, for whom
it is excellent training, but for the profession
proportionate disadvantage. One of the happiest
devices for simplifying the labour of noting and
"abstracting" is the " notanda," which has been
recently introduced by an ingenious counsel, Mr.
Tenison Edwards, and which consists of what
may be likened to little legal " postage stamps,"
each stamp containing a legal point and " decided
cases," which the studious practitioner fixes
adhesively to the margin of the page of his Text
Book.

But we take our intelligent foreigner over to
that row of noble folios and quartos known as

THE STATUTES AT LARGE.

Here at least is what may be called plain sailing
and clear pilotage. Here are the things which
are to be done, and the things to be left undone;
simple directions and warnings. Here is for our
foreigner the whole law parliamentary; awfully
voluminous, it is true, yet still tangible and
complete. We are proud of this glorious and
bulky monument. Yes, but let us look into it a
little closer.

This enormous lump of written law, consists
of nearly fifty thousand acts of parliament,
which regulate every conceivable relation of
men and women. Some of these are perfect
treatises, and some regular codes of laws.
Some in terms say distinctly, thou shalt not go
from Jericho to Jerusalem, and some in terms
say as distinctly, thou shalt go from Jericho to
Jerusalem. There is. no common spirit or
consistency through the whole, but each is complete
and dependent on itself. It is like a long-lived
child, who has been chaptering inconsistently
for centuries, and without regard to what it
said but a moment before.

As may be well conceived, this mass does not
regulate our life at the present time; and
certainly life that had to be governed by fifty
thousand statutes would soon become a burden.
It is obvious that a large portion has been
repealed in terms, or virtually; and accordingly,
when the Lord Chancellor, in '54, set some
careful plodding men to grope their way up these
cellars and disused sewers, like legal nightmen,
the startling discovery was made, that of the forty
thousand statutes (then in existence), nearly
eleven thousand were either obsolete, repealed,
or had expired; somewhere about fourteen
thousand were what are called private acts— namely,
for private persons and private estates, and of no
interest whatever to the nation; many more were
local acts, relating to districts and towns; many
more were confined exclusively to Ireland and
Scotland (but these a very insignificant total);
and finally, out of the huge boiling, a
deposit came to the bottom, of purely public acts,
belonging to the kingdom strictly, only a total
of some two thousand five hundred— possibly by
this time reaching to three thousand. The rest
might all be skimmed away.

No one can have an idea of the Augean state of
these legal stables. Of the statutes positively
and in terms repealed, not a word is to be said:
they are honestly eliminated from the mass.
But there is an enormous company of statutes
virtually obsolete, or practically repealed, which
sleep, and are not wakened by a sort of tacit
consent, but which are still statutes, and
technically law of the land. There are certain old
penal laws which come under this head, and
certain eminent injunctions, almost comic from
their old fashion. To be logical, these should
either be put in force or shovelled away by stout
law navvies. This, however, is more an
inconvenience of mere form than any practical
awkwardness. But the real glaring defect
takes a more serious shape. There are acts
which in expression and meaning virtually
repeal acts that have gone before, and there are
acts which in spirit and intention are virtually
hostile to other acts that have gone before.
Bacon, with a wonderful wisdom, has alluded
to this bungling order of law manufacture, when