unfortunately happens that this is exactly the part of our legislation in which the phraseology is most brief and distinct, because the acts are drawn by people conversant with the familiar nomenclature of their department; and instead of employing a mass of words in description, they use those abbreviated terms to which custom has given distinct and well-known interpretations, in the conventional language of their craft. Thus, in the act for the management of the Excise, the officer of excise, in whose survey' a licensed trader is, is to receive his entry' and copy it into the general entry book. But it is in the statutes for the alteration of the practice of the law, that this abbreviated phraseology is seen to most advantage; because the lawyer who revises a bill before it finds its way into either of the Houses, will often object to the abbreviated technicalities of other professions, and insist that they shall be described in words at length; but has no hesitation in using the nomenclature of his own, and indeed thinks that it is a peculiar and appropriate ornament of an act of Parliament. The act for abolishing fines and recoveries' has been greatly admired by the profession; but without derogating from its merits, there can be no doubt that much of its clearness and adaptation to its intended purposes has arisen from the draftsman having been able to express his intentions in technical words; conveying a precise and full meaning to his own mind, as well as to those who have to put in practice and to interpret the act.

As instances of the more diffuse species of draftmanship we might adduce the two Factor's acts.* They should have been peculiarly clear and concise, because they regulate those classes of mercantile transactions, which, in the accepted phraseology of men of business, are so succinctly and so emphatically described. Yet they exhibit the most cumbrous form of legal draftsmanship; because the person who drew them being probably a lawyer, would trust nothing to the descriptive power of mercantile technicalities, but must have every thing described at full length. Thus where a merchant would say When goods are 'taken in deposit or pledge from an agent by his creditor, as a security for the debt, he shall acquire no further right over them than the agent himself possessed'-the corresponding part of the act occupies about an ordinary octavo page, commencing with the usual verbiage— Provided always, and be it further enacted, that in case any person or persons, body or bodies, politic or corporate, shall, after the passing of this act, accept, or take any such goods, wares, or merchandise,' &c. &c.,

* 6 Geo. IV. c. 94; 5 and 6 Vict. c. 39.

During the last session of Parliament, an act was passed for enabling canal and navigation companies to vary their charges in different parts of their line of navigation.* It was provided by one section of this act, that when a line of navigation is connected with other lines, and the charges on the one have reference to those on the others, the managers of one part are not to alter their charges according to the powers given by the act, without the consent of the managers of the whole system of connected lines. It would be easy, one would think, by the aid of systematic arrangements, to make such a clause at once brief, clear, and legally effective; but as it appears on the statute book, we dare not incorporate it with the body of our remarks, lest the reader, sticking hopelessly in its meshes, should resolve to go no further; and we present it to the curious and adventurous, in a note. Such is a clause intended to be discussed and acted on

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* 8 and 9 Vict. c. 28.

Provided also, that where by any canal or navigation act or acts now passed, the tolls, rates, or duties (whether tolls per mile or tolls in gross) upon any description of goods, animals, articles, or things, or upon any boats, barges, or other vessels which shall be navigated, carried, or conveyed along any canal or navigation, or any portion thereof, and which shall pass into, out of, or along any such canal or navigation, or any portion thereof, from, into, or along any other canal or navigation, canals or navigations, adjoining or communicating therewith, or any portion thereof, or from or to the junction or junctions with any such adjoining or communicating canal or navigation, canals or navigations, are or shall be specially fixed, determined, or limited, either absolutely, or with reference to the tolls, rates, or duties to be levied or received from time to time on goods, animals, articles, or things, boats, barges, or other vessels passing into, out of, or along such canal or navigation, or any portion or portions thereof respectively, from, into, or along any other adjoining or communicating canal or navigation, canals or navigations, or from or to the junction or junctions with such other adjoining or communicating canal or navigation, canals or navigations; or where in any such act or acts any special enactment or provision shall have been inserted for securing a rateable reduction or advance of the respective tolls, rates, or duties to be levied or received from time to time on goods, animals, articles, or things, boats, barges, or other vessels, or on goods, animals, articles, or things, of the same description, passing over, along, into, or from any canal or navigation, or several and distinct portions of any canal or navigation, into or along two or more adjoining or communicating canals or navigations, or from or to the respective junctions of two or more adjoining or communicating canals or navigations, no alteration or variation of the tolls, rates, and duties so specially fixed, determined, or limited, or any

VOL. LXXXIV. NO. CLXIX.

† I

at boards of trustees; or to be the object of negotiation at general meetings of rival or inimical joint-stock companies! Among the acts in which technical legal expressions are made use of, there are certainly many which are in daily use among merchants, manufacturers, farmers, and other 'laymen;' and have to be interpreted twenty times by unprofessional persons, for once that they fall under the practical criticism of a lawyer. Yet so useful is it to have terms with an assigned meaning attached to them, that we are inclined to think such statutes are not so unintelligible as those which attempt to create a description by a multitude of words. Thus, by the Bankrupt Statute, an act of bankruptcy is performed by certain persons in trade. If any such trader shall depart this realm, or, being out of this realm, 'shall remain abroad, or depart from his dwelling-house, or otherwise absent himself, or begin to keep his house, or suffer ' himself to be arrested for any debt not due.' * The apparently almost contradictory actions of departing from his dwellinghouse,' and 'beginning to keep his house,' are not very self explanatory; but their meaning has been fixed in English law by a long series of decisions, the whole law of which is incorporated in the statute by these simple words. Forms more explanatory might have been used, but they might have aimed at clearness without achieving it; and, destroying the whole force of an elaborate array of hard-wrought precedents, have left all the work to be repeated. Legal expressions, the meaning of which has been established by a train of decisions, have in this respect a privilege with which no other words in the language can cope. They labour, it is true, under this disadvantage, of not being so

or either of them, other than such alterations or variations as are respectively authorized to be made under the several acts for regulating such canals or navigations, shall be made under the authority of this act without the previous consent in writing of the proprietors, trustees, undertakers, or commissioners of the canal or navigation, or of all the several canals or navigations, who are expressly mentioned in such special enactments or provisions, or of the committee, directors, or managers of the company, trustees, undertakers, or commissioners, or respective companies, trustees, undertakers, or commissioners of such canal or navigation, canals or navigations, which consents such companies, trustees, undertakers, and commissioners, or their respective committees, directors, or managers, are hereby authorized to give, either under their common seals respectively, or under the hand of their respective clerks or secretaries, although any such companies, trustees, or undertakers so consenting may not have adopted the other powers of this act.

* 6 Geo. IV. c. 16, § 2.

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accurately known to the public at large as to lawyers. Yet it may be questioned if any new phraseology would so well explain the meaning which even merchants, from daily practice and tradition, attach to the expression shall keep his house.'

Of all our statutes, those which are for the enforcement of Taxes ought to be expressed with the greatest clearness and simplicity. Individuals cannot meet the Crown, as they can do each other, in fair battle in the courts of law. There is no department of the law in which the subject is more jealous of his rights more suspicious-more prompt to be excited by the smallest symptom of injustice and more resolute, before yielding a willing obedience, to know how, and by whose authority, he is charged. There are two ways of meeting this enquiring spirit. An arbitrary, strong, and unreasonable legislature, if unable altogether to conceal its ordinnances, will shroud them in such an impenetrable mystery of complex arrangements, that the appalled investigator will shrink back from the threshold of the subject; and a power virtually arbitrary will be put into the hands of official persons, whose spontaneous explanations must satisfy the public: A fair, generous, and manly government will make the whole system as simple and clear as possible, trusting its execution to the people's acquaintance with the law, not to their ignorance of

Our own fiscal regulations too often exhibit the former character. The Income-Tax act is a marked instance of this class of legislation. If we suppose a widow with an income under £150 a-year, endeavouring to find out whether, and in what manner she is to get back the tax deducted from the several dividends of joint-stock companies, in which her means are invested, and picture her attempting to solve the enigmas of this code, divided into one hundred and ninety-three long sections-any one of which requires a thoroughly trained lawyer's intellect to comprehend it-we have a type of the complete dependence in which such legislation places the people, on the conduct of officials. It follows the model of the old property and income-tax acts of Pitt's day; which there can be little doubt were drawn with a wicked skill, to be comprehensible only by a high standard of accomplishment in fiscal statute lore. Every available form of repetition is adopted for no other purpose that can be divined but the accumulation of verbiage; as an analysis of any of these bundles of words would directly show. Thus, in section three, we have some previous acts referred to, and all the powers, authorities, methods, rules, directions, penalties, clauses, matters, and things contained in them. Then, immediately afterwards, in the same section,

there is an intention to repeat all these words, but the word. methods' is dropped out, and the word regulations' substituted for it. If there were a sufficient number of words, it does not seem to have mattered much what they were.

But it is not alone in the substantive clauses of this act itself, that its practice is fortified by a rampart of obscurity. It not only incorporates by references the powers of the assessed tax acts, but, reciting the titles of the property-tax acts of 1809 and 1810, it declares that they shall, severally and respectively, be and become in full force and effect, with respect to the duties ⚫ hereby granted, and shall be severally and respectively duly observed, applied, practised, and put in execution.' Thus a whole mass of expired forgotten law, with all its indigenous train of doubts and obscurities, is by a single sentence amalgamated with the native difficulties of the income-tax. It will be strange indeed, if in all this mighty maze, but not without a plan,' in one sense of the term, the well-trained official cannot find something to justify any act he may perform : it will be equally strange if any of the public at large should ever make themselves learned enough to pronounce whether he is acting according to law or

not.

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The punctuation of our statutes goes for nothing in law law composition,' says Mr Gael, is written in the continued style, which is the most ancient of all styles. In one form there is no stop or break until the end. An act of parliament has no period but the last, and a deed of conveyance none from the ' commencement until the covenants.' It is in such long and complex sentences as those of which our statutes consist, that punctuation is most needed, yet here it is not available. The rule so neatly expressed by Sir William Grant, It is from the words and from the context, not from the punctuation, that the sense must be collected,' is probably a sound one. To allow rights and obligations, the definition of offences and the nature of punishments, to depend on the locality of such minute, fugitive, and destructible items as commas and semicolons, might be danger ous; but the difficulty of applying to these sentences the ordinary aids of literary composition, is another reason for making them in their verbal structure short, clear, and simple. Our statutes are indeed utterly unintelligible without a powerful machinery of punctuation. In passing through the press, the acts are all abundantly punctuated by some irresponsible persons, and very often in such a manner as utterly to pervert their meaning. We could adduce many instances, but our readers will probably be satisfied with one, as a type of the whole. A clause of the 3 and 4 Vict. c. 18 § 3, for the regulation of the tobacco duties, is printed