INTRODUCTION. 
67 
state, in harmony with the principles of the constitution and the beneficent spirit 
of the age. Peter Van Schaack, an eminent lawyer, had been directed, in 1774, 
to revise the statute laws of the province, a task which he performed with ability 
and accuracy. 
It would be impossible, on this occasion, to review in detail the changes of 
municipal law which have been made ; changes so great as to have created a 
code as peculiarly distinct and national as the civil law or the common law of 
England. The entire criminal code has been revised and ameliorated, by the sub¬ 
stitution of a humane penitentiary system, with moral discipline and religious 
instruction established in lieu of a system which denounced the penalty of death 
for almost every form of municipal offence; and the new system has been re¬ 
cently improved by establishing a separate institution for the reformation of 
female offenders, under the exclusive care of persons of their own sex. The 
relations of debtor and creditor have been modified, and while frauds and dis¬ 
honesty have been subjected to rightful punishment, the honest but unfortunate 
debtor is relieved from oppression. The relations of landlord and tenant have 
been divested of every remnant of feudal service, and conformed to the equal 
spirit of republican institutions. The laws concerning insane persons, copied 
from an English statute passed in the reign of queen Anne, by which those un¬ 
happy persons who were bereft of reason were classed with “ vagrants and dis¬ 
orderly persons,” and required to be imprisoned to protect society against their 
violence, have been modified; and an institution has been erected in which they 
are cured of their mental and physical maladies, with all the aids which modern 
science has devised in that interesting department of the healing art. 
Preferences of primogeniture and of sex in regard to descents have been abo¬ 
lished, and judicious precautions have been adopted to prevent the too great ac¬ 
cumulation and too long duration of estates. The rights of married women have 
been enlarged. The alienation of land has been relieved from embarrassments 
and obstructions; and the general registration of deeds and incumbrances has re¬ 
sulted in promoting the convenience of acquiring and the disposing of real estate. 
