VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
439 
under the second of the two Pleuro-pneumonia Acts (No. 136 and No. 
123), could take place after the expiration of the first Act, which was 
only temporary ; whether, in fact, the second Act was not a mere adjunct 
to the first Act, and an adjunct which expired with the Act to which it 
was adjoined. The first Act (No. 126) was passed 30th April, 1861, and 
was to continue in force for one year, and thence until the end of the 
then next session of Parliament. The second Act (No. 136, consisting 
of but one section) was passed 14th May, 1862, when the first Act had 
still sixteen months of further time to continue in force. The second 
Act therefore operated for sixteen months, and then, with the first, 
expired. M‘William appellant v. Adams respondent , 1 Macqueen, 120— 
General statutes on the same subject matter are to be read as one statute. 
Mr. Harris. —This second statute can well stand by itself. It goes 
beyond the first. For a certain purpose, it continues the first, fix parte 
Higinbotham , 1 D. P. Cases, 200; The Queen v. Stock , 8 Ad. & Ell. 405. 
Mr. Justice Williams. —In that case the second Act (39 Geo. Ill, cap. 79) 
was passed just as the other (36 Geo. Ill) was expiring; and the second 
Act was workable without the first. Here the first had still sixteen 
months to run, and the second is entirely unworkable without the first. 
The Chief Justice. —It is a casus omissus. The second Act seems to have 
been drawn hastily, and it seems to have been assumed that it would 
have continued the first; but it did not do so. 
Appeal allowed, with costs. 
In commenting on this case, the Argus says, “ The Supreme Court has 
decided that no Pleuro-pneumonia Act is now in existence in this colony. 
The question has been for some time a subject of considerable discussion 
and some doubt. It was held, on the one hand, that the Act passed in 
April, 1861, at the instance of Mr. Mollison, expired by effluxion of 
time with the close of the session of Parliament in 1863; and on the 
other, that the amending Act, which became law in May, 1862, was also 
a continuing: Act, and therefore maintained the virtue of the original Act 
after the date at which that Act of itself became inoperative. The doubt 
has interfered considerably with the freedom of action of owners of cattle, 
and has given an uncertainty to the proceedings of the inspectors 
appointed under the bill, which has not operated for good in any direc¬ 
tion. It is well, therefore, that the question is settled. The object of 
the first Pleuro-pneumonia Bill was, if possible, to stay the spread of a 
disease which had made its appearance in the colony for the first time, 
but the dangerous and fatal character of which was well known. It was 
confessed by the authors of the measure, however, that the delays which 
marked its progress through Parliament rendered it almost hopeless that 
the operation of the bill would have the beneficial effect at first antici¬ 
pated from it. If the Act could have been made law with the haste the 
urgency of the case required, pleuro-pneumonia might have been con¬ 
fined to the district in which it first appeared, by the passage of cattle 
from that to other portions of the colony being strictly prohibited; for 
it is admitted that the disease is contagious, and has been widely spread 
by the wanderings of infected animals. But Parliament was dilatory. 
The opportunity was lost. Before the inspectors were armed with suffi¬ 
cient powers to attempt the arrest of the disease, the evil had spread far 
and wide, with all the disastrous consequences that have since ensued to 
trade, and losses to breeders and rearers of cattle. Since 1861 we have 
seen pleuro-pneumonia assert its presence in almost every district of this 
and the neighbouring colonies, and extend its ravages to both the north 
and south islands of New Zealand. Happily it seems to have become 
