THE EVOLUTION OF AN ACT OF PARLIAMENT.* .
THIS volume aintains a collection of the Carpentier Lectures delivered at Columbia University by the learned author in October, 1913. Sir Courtenay Ebert, who was for many years Parliamentary draftsman, and has been Clerk of the House of Commons since 1902, has enjoyed unique opportunities for studying the mechanics of legislation, and the subject is one of which, in spite of its great importance and of the freedom with which we all criticize the incompetence of law-makers, most of us are surprisingly ignorant. The greater part of Sir Courtenay's volume deals with the office of the Parlia- mentary draftsman, its history, its duties, the circumstances in which its exceedingly difficult and exacting duties have to be carried out, and the rules which the writer's own experience has led him to formulate for the guidance of the draftsman— ground which he has already to some extent covered in his Legis- latiie Methods and Forms. Probably no official comes in for so much abuse as the Parliamentary draftsman, and-certainly none at the present time deserves it less, for none has circumstances so much against him. In the first place, after he has prepared a Bill with parental care and forethought, he has often to sit and see it riddled with amendments, over which he can only exercise a very partial supervisilin. In the second (and this is a point which his legal critics seldom realize), he can never forget that he is drafting for a popular Assembly. He is often debarred by this consideration from using the language and the methods which would suit him best for fear of being unintelligible to the, ordinary Member of Parliament or of arousing some unreasonable and irrelevant prejudice. And in addition to this he has the still heavier burden of centuries of faulty legislation on his back. We have at last, largely through the agency of Bentham, whose admirable treatise on 'Nomography Sir Courtenay analyses in one of his most valuable chapters, and through the work of such drafts- men as the late Lord Thring and his pupil, the present -author, freed ourselves from the thraldom of our old abominable legislative style; but our statute book remains, in spite of much excellent work in the way of law revision .(the course of which Sir Courtenay traces in another very interesting lecture), unduly complex. Cumbrous phrases 'have acquired fixed meanings by judicial interpretation, *and legislation by reference cannot be wholly avoided. We cannot, therefore, hope ever to attain to so clear and Concise a style as newer countries have done (the legislative methods of the Commonwealth of Australia, for instance, are likely always to remain ahead of our own) ; nor can we hive to make such use of the system of periodical law revision as di> almost all. our Colonies, where legislation is confined 'within so much narrower bounds. But with improved drafting methods, the revised edition of the Statutes to 1900, and the excellent annual indices issued by the Statute Law Committee, we have already effected a great deal. Mention must also be 'made of the system of legislating by means of Departmental rules issued under the authority of Acts of Parliament. This system of Executive legislation (which, however, we do not Carry nearly so far as do some Continental nations) is very effective in keeping the actual statute book clear and unen- cumbered by the complex administrative provisions which the ambitious schemes of modern Legislatures make necessary, and which will not, it is to be presumed, decrease when England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales all have Legislatures of their own. Let us hope that if ever that day should come each of the new Assemblies may find as gifted and far-seeing a 'helper as the author of the present lectures.
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