6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



conception will be formed of the aggregate evils caused by law-making 

 unguided by study of social science. In a paper read to the Statistical 

 Society in May, 1873, by Mr. Janson, Vice-President of the Law So- 

 ciety, it was stated that from the statute of Merton (20 Henry III) to 

 the end of 1872, there had been passed 18,110 public acts, of which 

 he estimated that four fifths had been wholly or partially repealed. 

 He also stated that the number of public acts repealed wholly or 

 partly, or amended, during the three years 1870-72 had been 3,532, 

 of which 2,759 had been totally repealed. To see whether this rate 

 of repeal has continued, I have referred to the annually-issued volumes 

 of " The Public General Statutes" for the last three sessions. Leaving 

 out amended acts and enumerating only acts entirely repealed, the 

 result is that in the last three sessions there have been repealed sepa- 

 rately, or in groups, 650 acts belonging to the present reign. This, of 

 course, is greatly above the average rate ; for there has of late been 

 an active clearance of the statute-book going on. But, making every 

 allowance, we must infer that within our own times repeals have 

 mounted some distance into the thousands. Doubtless a number of 

 them have been of laws that were obsolete ; others have been de- 

 manded by changes of circumstances {though seeing how many of 

 them are of quite .recent acts this has not been a large cause) ; others 

 simply because they were inoperative ; and others have been conse- 

 quent on the consolidations of numerous acts into single acts. But 

 unquestionably, in multitudinous cases, repeals came because the acts 

 had proved injurious. We talk glibly of such changes — we think of 

 canceled legislation with indifference. We forget that before laws 

 are abolished they have generally been inflicting evils more or less 

 serious, some for a few years, some for tens of years, some for centu- 

 ries. Change your vague idea of a bad law into a definite idea of 

 it as an agency operating on people's lives, and you see that it means 

 so much of pain, so much of illness, so much of mortality. A vicious 

 form of legal procedure, for example, either enacted or tolerated, en- 

 tails on suitors costs, or delay, or defeat. What do these imply ? Loss 

 of money, often ill-spared ; great and prolonged anxiety ; frequently 

 consequent illness ; unhappiness of family and dependents ; children 

 stinted in food and clothing — all of them miseries which bring after 

 them multitudinous remoter miseries. Add to which there are the far 

 more numerous cases of those who, lacking the means or the courage 

 to enter on lawsuits, and submitting to frauds, are impoverished, and 

 have similarly to bear the pains of body and mind which ensue. See- 

 ing, then, that bad legislation means injury to men's lives, judge what 

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

 mortality which these thousands of repealed acts of Parliament repre- 

 sent ! Fully to bring home the truth that law-making unguided by 

 adequate knowledge brings immense evils, let me take a special case 

 which a question of the day brings before us. 



