AIDS TO CORRECT LAWMAKING.
WE are reminded of this topic by the following announcement, which appeared in the Times of Thursday last— "Mr. Coulson, of Lincoln's Inn, has been appointed by Sir George Grey to suc- ceed Mr. Bethune as Parliamentary Counsel to the Horne Office; his duty being to prepare the bills originating with any department of the Government, and to revise or report upon any bills brought before Parliament and referred to Ain by the Secretary of State. Mr. Bethune, Mr. Coulson's predecessor, proceeds immediately to India, where he will Sll the place formerly occupied by Mr. Macaulay."
Mr. Coulson has excellent qualifications for the task, and the appointment is perfectly unexceptionable. But, powerful as are his abilities, and laborious as are his habits, it will be but justice to Mr. Coulson not to jeopardize his fair fame by imposing upon him a range of duties exceeding the capacity of mortal to execute. Not one man or several can perform them without the aid of men of great ability in different walks, nor without the aid of trained persons in the more mechanical departments. Those imperfec- tions which it delighted the men of Westminster Hall to note in Mr. Bethune's labours (for which he was in nowise to blame) came from imposing upon a man of first-rate abilities and more than first-rate industry a task which no one could execute in the time and with the means at his disposal. And it is to be feared, that from the want of records and of the means of tradition which an established office affords, the accumulated learning and ex- perience which Mr. Bethune must have acquired during the ten or twelve years that he held his late appointment, will be in a great measure lost, or transferred to India, where it will be of secondary value; and Mr. Coulson will have to begin upon an almost uncultivated field of exertion, and finally follow his pre- decessor, leaving those who come after him as ill provided as himself.
Precedents of acts passed will ill supply the place : they contain what was adopted, but not the rejected parts of legislation—the materials of the future amendments which our haphazard legis- lation necessitates. Nor are the materials adopted in our multi- farious legislation so collated as to be at hand at the hour of need.
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