Pontiff, a king whose right no Italian denied, and in whose cause many Italians zealously fought,-and the lord of a strange disunited collection of kingdoms, who unhappily possesses a corner of Italian soil, and who till lately exercised an illegitimate influence over Italy in general? It is hard to see why the Archduke of Austria calls himself Emperor, without election or coronation; it is hard to see what is meant by an "Emperor of Austria" any more than by an Emperor of Reuss-Schleiz; it is hard to see how a prince, the greater part of whose dominions lie out of Germany, can give himself out as the representative of the old German kings; but it is harder still to see the resemblance between the foreign prince who does not even claim the Italian kingdom, who by mere brute violence holds an Italian province without a single Italian partisan, and the "dulcissimus Imperator" who commanded the loyal devotion of Pavia and Lodi and Cremona. One of the very strangest notions is that "Austria" is an ancient, venerable, conservative power. History pronounces it to be modern, upstart, and revolutionary, a power which has risen to a guilty greatness by trampling on every historical right and every national memory. The so-called "Empire" of Austria-a lover of old German history almost shrinks from writing the hateful title is a mere creation of yesterday, a mere collection of plunder from various quarters. Hungary and Bohemia were once elective kingdoms; Gallicia was rent from unhappy Poland by the basest of treachery and ingratitude; Venice and Ragusa were independent republics within the memory of man; the liberties of Cracow have been trampled to the earth before our own eyes. What has such a power as this in common with the old days of great and united Germany? What is its "imperial" master but a mere impostor, a bastard Cæsar, a profane mockery of the glories of Charles and Otto, and Henry and Frederick? German as well as Italian patriotism ought to shrink from the miserable sham. If the imperial title,-now become the prize of perjury and massacre,- has not sunk too low to be borne by the chief of a free people, the true Cæsar Augustus will be he whom we trust soon to see enthroned in the old capital of Italy and the world. And if the chosen King of liberated Italy can recover either the iron crown of Monza or the golden crown of Rome, not the least ennobling association of these venerable relics will be, that they have pressed the noble brow of King Frederick of Hohenstaufen.

ART. III.-THE STATUTES AT LARGE.

First, Second, and Third Reports of Mr. Bellenden Ker to the Lord Chancellor on the Proceedings of the Board for the Revision of the Statute-Law. 1853, 1854.

First, Second, Third, and Fourth Reports from Her Majesty's Commissioners for Consolidating the Statute-Law. 1855-9. (Parliamentary Blue-books.)

REVISION of the Statutes, consolidation of the Statutes, codification of the Law, or some similar phrase, is now a common item in the programme of the social reformer; but though willing to believe that some of those who promise or advocate such operations attach a definite meaning to the words they use, we cannot refrain from adding that a vast deal has been said and written on the subject which has been a mere beating of the air, and has conveyed no information, nor suggested any intelligible plan whatever.

It may, therefore, be a not useless task to lay before our readers such general views of the nature of our common and statute law as may enable them to judge for themselves of the practical value of the various schemes which have been, or may be, brought before them under the popular titles above mentioned.

We will premise that it is not proposed to enter here into any examination of the proceedings of the Commission whose Reports are referred to at the head of this Article. Whether deservedly or not, it does not seem to have earned much popular favour, and it has now ceased to exist, without having effected any important results.* The Reports, however, contain much

* Its most useful published work is a "Register of the Public General Acts," showing what statutes are now in force, and how every act has been affected by subsequent legislation. This Register was completed from the present time up to the Union with Ireland under the direction of the late Commission, and, we believe, is being continued, under the direction of the Government, notwithstanding the dissolution of the Commission. So much as is finished has been printed for the use of Parliament, and may be purchased. Though some of the details of the plan are open to criticism, the execution of this work is excellent, and reflects the greatest credit on the learning and diligence of the gentlemen employed in it. A large number of bills for consolidating the law on different subjects have also, it would seem, been prepared by order of the Commission; but only a few of these have got so far as to be laid before Parliament, and none have been so fortunate as to be hatched into acts. Of these few, a set of bills to consolidate the criminal law have alone attracted any attention; they have been brought in, with more or less alteration, in 1856, 1857, 1859, and 1860, and narrowly escaped passing on the last occasion. The Minutes of the proceedings of the Commission have also been made public, some of them having been moved for and printed as Parliamentary Papers from time to time, and the remainder being annexed to the Reports.

valuable and suggestive matter, and may be studied with advantage by all those who wish to take up in earnest the question of Statute-law Reform. We shall freely avail ourselves of their contents in the course of the following pages, whenever we find that the views of the Commissioners coincide with our own.

This phrase," Statute-law Reform," is not a very definite one, and has widely different meanings in different mouths, besides having no meaning at all in a good many. Sometimes a codification of the whole law, statute and common, seems to be intended; sometimes consolidation of the statute-law only; sometimes nothing more than a convenient edition of the statutes, with or without notes and references; sometimes the idea of amendment of the substance of the law is included in it, sometimes not. Consolidation, again, seems sometimes to mean a fusion into one enactment of the effect of a number of given enactments; sometimes (a widely different process) the composition into one enactment of all the statutory law on a given subject, collected from the whole range of the statute-book. It is therefore necessary, before we proceed further, to ascertain with some exactness the limits of our field of inquiry.

In the first place, then, it must be understood that we are examining only into the possibility and expediency of effecting any change in the form and arrangement of the law. With changes in its substance we have at present nothing to do; and great confusion is caused by public speakers and writers who mix up the questions of codification or consolidation with that of amendment. Of course, wherever the law is defective or objectionable, it is advisable to alter it-that is a mere truism as an abstract proposition; and it is also true that, in many cases, a legislator, proposing to introduce improvements in any branch of the law, will find that he can accomplish his purpose most effectually by repealing the whole existing law on the subject, and reenacting it, with alterations, in a form which may be termed a code or consolidation. But it is obvious that any such process is merely a method of law-amendment, and has nothing to do with codification or consolidation as such. It has, indeed, been urged that the two processes can be made to go hand in hand; and so in one sense they may, as we hope to show further on; but not in the sense of those who conceive that a kind of school of journeymen legislators might be formed, who should go through the whole body of the law, consolidating and amending as they proceed. Not to mention objections which might be raised to such a process on constitutional grounds, this notion of hiring a body of men who are to be professional law-reformers during office-hours, at so much a year, is quite a mistake. No reforms worth any thing are to be expected from men set down

to a given subject with instructions to see what amendments it wants. The reforms that are worth any thing are those which suggest themselves in a very different way,-those which persons already masters of the subject feel and see to be wanted, and press for with personal interest, and a sense of personal responsibility. Official reformers without power can do no real good, however intelligent and conscientious they may be; they must have instructions of some sort: and yet to speak of instructions how to reform sounds almost like an absurdity; they can at best only state difficulties, and the real work remains to be done by him who determines how they are to be solved. Reforms and poems cannot be made to order. At any rate, consolidation or codification is clearly separable from amendment in idea, and it is essential to distinct views on the subject that it should be so separated.

Codification in its fullest sense is an operation which (one would have thought) no one aware of the meaning of the words he was using would seriously advocate in this country. Nevertheless, as such an operation is seriously advocated by some persons, and as consolidation and revision of the statute-law are not unfrequently spoken of as steps towards a code, it appears advisable to explain what the word means, and to point out how a codification of the whole law (could we conceive such a work possible) would operate. A code, then, in its fullest sense would imply the abrogation of the whole law of England, and the substitution for it, by Act of Parliament, of a collection of general abstract propositions; and we hardly need add that the notion of doing any thing of the kind, merely for the sake of altering the form, not the substance, of the law, is as inconsistent with all just and reasonable views of the nature of law in general, and of the law of England in particular, as it is impossible in practice.

A nation which has no constitution or laws, or which wants to abolish those which it has and make new ones, must make a code, because it cannot get what it wants otherwise; but it is an error to suppose that a code is the highest form in which the laws of a nation can exist. It is, on the contrary, an imperfect form-a skeleton at best; and no code, however voluminous, can really satisfy the wants of a nation in any advanced stage of civilisation until it has been modified, explained, extended, and generally made complete-partly by the labours of commentators and jurists, and partly at the expense of the public, by the actual delitigation of all doubtful points.

It is useless to argue with rhapsodists who expect that a body of law really well adapted to the wants and necessities of a social state so complex as ours can be put into a form in which

any body, by just turning to an index, can ascertain for himself all his rights, duties, and liabilities, in every combination of circumstances. Whatever the form in which they are to exist, it is a mere dream to suppose that the laws of England can ever be safely handled by one who has not made them his special study. All the declamation, therefore, about the hardship of expecting "plain men" to find out what the law is--the imaginary pictures of the perplexity of "intelligent strangers," and so forth-may be set aside as quite irrelevant. Code or no code, the plain man must consult his attorney, or run the risk of being tripped up by those who do.

Nobody will seriously deny that the law of England,* on the whole, is more complete, better adapted to meet every emergency, and more consistent with natural equity, than that of any other nation. This excellence we owe in a great measure to the fact that it has grown up on the principle of self-development; the only principle on which a really free constitution and really good laws can grow up. If we were to reduce that law to a code, however copious, we should, even if we could ever struggle out of the awful confusion into which we should be thrown by the attempted change,-a change (as will appear presently) going to the most fundamental principles,-we should (we say) at least have to begin again the work in which we have been engaged for the last eight or nine centuries, by building up on the code a superstructure of comments and decisions, so as to make it really complete and serviceable for daily use,the process which nations that have lately had codes imposed on them are now painfully undergoing; so that with us, to make a code without any intention of altering the law, but only for the sake of altering the form of it, so far from being progress, would be at the very least a wilful demolition of threefourths of all the good law we now possess, and absolutely for nothing, except to gratify the whim of a few doctrinaires, who now feel mortified at not being able to show "our code" to some German professor who may have been ignorant enough to inquire for it.†

The example of France and other continental nations is often pointed to; but they are no precedent for us. They made codes because they wanted new laws, and (as has been said) are now, and will be for many generations, engaged in bringing them, by a most laborious and costly process, to the stage in which our law now is. We are often told, indeed, that

* Including of course under this term such of our colonies, and of the United States of America, as have derived their laws from England.

† See some excellent observations by Mr. Coode in the appendix to Mr. Ker's First Report (1853), p. 17.