strictly within this class, may have been adopted with no other sanction than tacit consent and general conformity. Local usages, morever, must have existed in this as in the other Colonies; some of which may have had their origin in the notions of law, which were brought by the Dutch settlers from the continent of Europe, or in obsolete ordinances of the early colonial authorities; and others must naturally have grown out of the condition and circumstances of the people, at different periods of their colonial history. These particular customs, with the vast accession made to the common law of England by the rapid growth of commerce, and consequent adoption in the courts of entire new systems of maritime and commercial jurisprudence, probably completed the body of the common law, existing in New York at the era of the American Revolution. We are not sufficiently conversant with the niceties of local law in New York, to know how extensive was the above supposed infusion of continental law from a Dutch original, or how much of it can still be distinctly traced. The Dutch articles of capitulation of 1664, confirmed by treaty ten years after, expressly provide, among other things, that the Dutch shall enjoy their own customs concerning their inheritances;' but the Charter of Liberties, promulgated by the first colonial assembly, in 1683, settles, that an estate of inheritance in lands shall thenceforward be according to the customs and practice of his Majesty's realm of England; and the Constitution of 1777, before cited, seems to allow no operation to existing usages as a part of the law of the land, excepting such as either appertained to the common law of England, or had received express sanction from colonial legislation. Yet the same act of the people, which admitted the common law of England, itself a curious aggregate of usages, customs, traditions, and adjudications, to prescribe to them their rules of civil conduct, could hardly have excluded, by mere implication, the particular customs of the Colony; and we cannot suppose, that while the traces of this foreign origin are yet distinctly visible in other relations, its impress should have been utterly obliterated from the whole body of the laws of this people.

Such being the condition of the common law of New York at the time of the Revolution, we are not aware that it has since undergone any greater change, than what may be called its natural growth by new combinations and applications of its principles, or else such limited alterations as belong to

the usual progress of legislation, in this country, except, that by an act passed in 1788, entitled 'an act for the amendment of the law, and the better advancement of justice,' it was enacted, 'that none of the statutes of England, or Great Britain, shall be considered as laws of this State.' It would be a delicate task, and somewhat foreign to our present purpose, to consider how far this general repudiation of the English statutes fairly extends, and what effect it has had, if any, upon the common law of the State, as existing at the time of its formation; and whether it has really been, conformably to the title of the act, an amendment of the law, and calculated for the better advancement of justice.

The statute law now in force in New York, is, of course, composed of the Constitution, treaties, and public laws of the United States, and the acts of its own State legislature. These last, with the exception of local and private acts, are in a great measure derived from British statutes of a date preceding the Revolution; in many instances they are copied verbatim from the English Statute Book, and in others its provisions are adopted with slight alterations of phraseology. The colonial statutes, declared by the Constitution to be a part of the law of the State, have never been rejected, like the British statutes, en masse; many, on the contrary, have been formally reenacted; and others probably mingle, unseen, in the current of legislation, and still have a silent operation in pointing out the just construction of existing laws. A large body of new statute law must, of course, have been the immediate growth of the Revolution. Government was to be organized; courts were to be instituted; the administration of justice, civil and criminal, was to be regulated; forms of process and of judicial proceedings to be provided; the whole future course of legislation and judicature to be determined. This sudden influx of new matter, somewhat hastily contrived for the present exigency, must, of course, have led to many errors and imperfections, which were to be remedied from time to time, as experience should suggest them, by additional acts, modifying the former provisions, or wholly repealing them, and substituting something new, destined itself probably to be in like manner the subject of future amendments, additions, and repeals; for 'it is most certain,' says a learned judge, who was more attentive to his law than his grammar, 'that time and long experience is much more ingenious, subtil, and judicious, than all the wisest and acutest wits in the

world coexisting can be.' Besides supplying the defects and repairing the errors necessarily incident to first experiments in legislation, the unexampled prosperity of the nation, and of no part of it more than this distinguished State, the almost incredible growth of population, and immense extension of commerce, a vast and rapid accumulation of wealth, wonderful inventions and discoveries in mechanics and the arts, great public schemes of internal improvement, and innumerable private associations for the employment and security of large capitals in trade and manufactures, have for these forty years past combined to create a real demand for new laws, adapted to the improved condition and modern exigencies of society. It would have been well for the community, and a great relief to courts and counsellors, as well as to revisers and digesters, if the growth of the Statute Book, had arisen wholly from such causes, and only kept pace with the natural demand. But the frequency of popular elections, the minute representation of sectional interests, and the Athenian fondness for novelty among us, have given rise to a very mischievous facility of legislation.

It is notorious that a great proportion of the changes made in our public laws, even those of the most important and extensive operation, are made for particular cases, and are sometimes very ill adapted for any other. It is equally notorious, that an act of incorporation is commonly granted to any set of men, who ask it, for almost any purpose, and with almost any powers, which they are pleased to have inserted in their bill. We do not mean to insinuate, that this is owing to improper influences; although there has been a shrewd suspicion of such operating, in one or two cases, to a small extent upon the legislature of New York. We apprehend that such instances, if they exist in any legislature of the Union, are extremely rare; but we think there is in all of them a slovenly and careless mode of legislating, to a degree almost as culpable; for it is a good maxim of the common law, that gross laches is tantamount to fraud. Private bills are commonly drafted by the petitioner, or his counsel; are often read by their titles only, and pass, almost of course, without amendment, and in fact without any effectual notice of their contents to the house. Important changes of general laws, to subserve a particular, though perhaps honest end, are sometimes artfully thrust in by their friends among the matters of little moment, to be hurried through, at the end of a session, without debate, and consequently often without due intelli

gence of their necessary operation; and in other cases, where the principles of a law have been fairly discussed and are well understood, the acts themselves are yet so inartificially and inaccurately penned as to beget great doubt and uncertainty of their true intent; giving rise to perpetual litigation and innumerable emendatory acts. The legislators themselves are often as much surprised as the courts, to find what has become law; and the chief business of each succeeding legislature is to patch up or repeal, what was ill done by its immediate predecessor.

These remarks are not intended to apply to New York alone; they are quite as true, perhaps more so, of other State legislatures; and, indeed, the whole foregoing history of the origin, progress, and condition, both of the common and statute law of New York, is, with little exception, a history of the law of all the other States of the old confederation.

If our statements are not greatly overcharged, it can readily be imagined what a mass of useless rubbish a few years of such legislation must accumulate in the Statute Book; how many acts are to be consulted, and how many doubts of construction resolved, before the most experienced lawyer can instruct his client in what ought to be so plain a matter as the operation of the written law; and how necessary some system of revision and consolidation must from time to time become.

There are few, if any, of the States in which something of this sort, more or less extensive, has not been attempted. In some of of their legislative assemblies, as in the Congress of the United States and the British Parliament, all acts relative to the same subject are occasionally reviewed and consolidated into one, with such amendments as experience of their practical operation may have suggested. In others, the whole Statute Book has been put into the hands of commissioners to be arranged for reenactment. Virginia, especially, deserves great praise, both as a Colony and a State, for her uniform attention to the reformation and republication of her statute laws. She has made, according to the statement of Mr Henning, who, as a reporter of her courts and a reviser of her laws, is well known to the profession generally, no less than twelve entire revisions; the first of them as early as 1632; the last in 1808. She has besides, under the superintendence of the gentleman abovementioned, recently achieved a great work, of a different character indeed, but sufficiently connected with our topic to allow us to notice it, as one of great importance to the history of the country, as well as the

administration of her own municipal law. We allude to the. publication of her Statutes at Large; being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia from the First Session of the Legislature in 1619;' occupying thirteen octavo volumes, of five or six hundred pages each. No similar work has as yet been attempted in any other State. Maine also deserves commendation for embracing the opportunity afforded by her erection into a separate State, to make great improvements in the Statute Book of Massachusetts. One of her first acts was to appoint a Board of Jurisprudence, consisting of eminent lawyers, to superintend the publication of the laws, with authority to classify and arrange the whole as to them might appear most convenient. They pursued the authority given them by consolidating all laws then in force relative to the same subject, and rejecting all which were repugnant and contradictory, so as to comprise the whole in a single moderate volume, containing everything useful for ordinary purposes, which was to be found in the four volumes then existing of Massachusetts laws. Massachusetts, we regret to say, has done less in this matter than she might have done with perfect safety and great usefulness. There has been no extensive revision of her laws for more than forty years; nor any preceding the last for more than a century. We, of course, do not consider mere collections and republications, by authority, as revisions. The collection of Ancient Charters and General Laws of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts Bay, in a single volume, though highly valuable to the historian, and perfectly convenient to the profession, is still but a meagre substitute, as a collection of legal and historical documents, for the statutes at large. The last edition of the General Laws of the Commonwealth, from the adoption of the Constitution, though published after the publication of the Laws of Maine, has none of the improvements of that book, but consists of two considerable volumes, and abounds in acts additional, restraining, extending, repealing, restoring, and rerepealing, without consolidation or method, other than belongs to chronological arrangement, and frequent references from act to act. The fault is in the author

ity given; not in the execution of the task.

But it is time to advert again to the laws of New York. 'The era of legislation,' as it has been called, in that Colony, was 1683. But the colonial acts of that and several subsequent years, with a few exceptions, are not to be found in any printed edition of the laws extant; and it is stated by learned gentlemen, VOL. XXIV.NO. 54. 26