THE FAMILY AND THE NATION 221 



and we see that it means so much of pain, so much of ilhiess, so 

 much of mortahty. A vicious form of legal procedure, for 

 example, either enacted or tolerated, entails on suitors, costs, or 

 delays, or defeats. What do these imply ? Loss of money, 

 often ill-spared ; great and prolonged anxiety ; frequently 

 consequent illness ; mihappiness of family and dependents ; 

 children stinted in food and clothing — all of them miseries 

 which bring after them multipUed remoter miseries. Even 

 to say that a law has been simply a hindrance, is to say 

 that it has caused needless loss of time, extra trouble, and addi- 

 tional worry ; and among over-burdened people extra trouble 

 and worry imply, here and there, breakdowns in health with 

 their entailed direct and indirect sufferings. Seeing, then, that 

 bad legislation means injury to men's lives, judge what must be 

 the total amount of mental distress, physical pain, and raised 

 mortahty, which these thousands of repealed Acts of Parliament 

 represent ! "* This warning was pubUshed in a magazine of 

 wide circulation in this country ; but it appears, as Herbert 

 Spencer fully expected, to have received no adequate heed. It 

 is, therefore, all the more to be welcomed that Dr. Whetham and 

 his wife should once more, in a rather different way, and with a 

 wider experience and an expanded knowledge before us, repeat 

 the warning, and ask anew our consideration of the problem. 



It is clear we cannot continually harass through the agency 

 of taxation and by other means the more self-respecting, the 

 self-supportmg, and generally better portion of the community, 

 for the benefit and maintenance of the thriftless, the foohsh, the 

 lazy, and drimken, without in the long rmi definitely modifying 



* Herbert Spencer had been caDing attention to the fact that an Act of 

 ParUament would not be repealed if it were beneficent in operation, and 

 that it can usually only be repealed with difficulty — as witness many 

 vicious unrepealed and active laws of our times — and then only after it 

 has inflicted intolerable wrong and prolonged suffering. Then he pro- 

 ceeded to show how vicious the great mass of legislation was by citing the 

 remarkable fact that since the Statute of Merton (20 Henry III.) to the 

 end of 1872, there had been passed 18,110 public Acts: of which, Mr. 

 Janson, Vice-President of the Law Society had estimated that four-fifths 

 had been repealed. The same gentleman also stated that during the three 

 years 1870-71-72, 3,532 Acts had been repealed, partially repealed or 

 amended, and of these 2,759 had been wholly repealed. In order to ascer- 

 tain whether this rate of repeal had been maintained, Herbert Spencer 

 referred to the volume of "Public General Statutes," which is issued 

 annually, and noted the number of repealed Acts for the last three Sessions 

 of Parliament. These would be the three Sessions immediately preceding 

 the year 1884. Leaving aside numerous amended Acts, the result was 

 that in this short period 650 Acts were repealed. Doubtless a number of 

 them were laws wliich were obsolete ; others had been demanded by 

 change of circumstances, but seeing how many belonged to the current reign 

 and were of quit« recent date, it must be inferred that in multitudinous 

 cases, repeals came because the Acts had proved injurious. 



