SUMMARY OP MEDIAEVAL LEGISLATION. 201 



lities which otherwise we might not have possessed for 

 making ourselves acquainted with the past treatment of 

 woods and forests in England; and of this I proceed to 

 avail myself, citing laws and injunctions which have been 

 issued at different times anterior to the commencement 

 of the present century, when a new departure was taken 

 in the management of the crown forests, with results which 

 have led to more attention being now given to them as 

 sources of gain than as coverts for game. Some of these 

 laws served a temporary purp6se, and the circumstances to 

 which they were applicable haviag disappeared, they be- 

 came effete, or they may otherwise have become obsolete, 

 though never abrogated ; but for our purpose they still are 

 useful. 



involved in the employment of boys in sweeping chimneys, and thereupon a Chimney 

 Sweepers* Act was passed. A few years later, there followed Acts for the protection 

 from v£|(rious risks of accident of children employed in certain kinds of factories or 

 mines. Later still public attention was directed to the danger incurred by children 

 employed ,as acrobats, and a few sessions ago an Act was passed for the pi'otection of 

 such performers. Very probably thereexist at this moment other employments for child- 

 ren quite as cruel or dangerous as any which the Acts in question applied to, but which 

 public has not found out, and which are untouched by any Act. Certainly, for instance 

 the statutory penalties which attach to sending a boy up a chimney, would not attach 

 to sending him up a sewer, in which his chance of being wedged in or suffocated might 

 be quite as great. Why, then, in spite of all these special Acts, was not an Act passed 

 establishing, once for all, as a general principle of law, that tbe employment of boys 

 and girls in any manner involving; either serious cruelty or serious danger to life or 

 limb, should be a criminal offence, attaching appropriate penalties to this offencCj and 

 leaving the Courts of Justice to put this law in force against chimney sweepers, acro- 

 bats, and all the world besides? The answer is not without practical force. The Home 

 Secretary of the day, backed by a certain amount of public indign£.i;ion, mi^ht reason- 

 ably expect to be too strong for the chimney-sweeping interest, or the acrobatic interest. 

 But if he had sought to attain his end by establishing any general principle of law, the 

 opponents of the measure would have found it easy to raise so much alarm amongst the 

 employers of boys and girls all over the country, that the bill could not have been carried. 

 So the statute law is botched, and made year by year more patchy and complex, to satisfy 

 the exigencies of Parliamentary management. 



*' For this intolerable jumble of case law, statute law, and no law at all, there is but 

 one deliverance. As Mr Pollok says with reference to our commercial law, he might 

 have said with reference to our whole system of law : — 



" * The remedy lies straight before us, and has already been applied with success by 

 the majority of civilised nations. It is the statement of the law by the supreme autho- 

 rity of the Legislature, and in an orderly and lucid form ; in one word, codification. If 

 Parliament is afraid of undertaking this, it is afraid of undertaking that which the 

 Italian Parliament, the German Reichstag, and the Swiss Federal Assembly have beea 

 doing, without fear and failure, for several years past.' 



*' So, too, have we been doing something of this, and doing it with excellent results, 

 but doing it for India, not for ourselves. But an Indian code has not to pass the House 

 of Commons." 



I cite this here solely in illustration of the point to which I refer in the text, and I do 

 so the more freely that in all the more important schools of forestry on the Continent, 

 provision is made for the study of jurisprudence both in its more comprehensive sense, 

 and in its more .restricted application to the science of law by all aspirants for appoint- 

 ments foresters in the forest service of the country. 



