STATUTES, or ACTS OF PARLIAMENT, are those laws made from time to time by the legislature, which qualify and alter the commons law or previous statutes. All laws may be divided into common law and statutory law, the former beinx unwritten, the latter being written. The theory as to the common law is, that it consists merely of ancient usages, accepted by all, of which the written exposition has perished, but which tradi tion has kept alive: and much of the common law necessarily consists of what Inas some times been called judge-made law—a department of law which has often been ignorantly denounced as illegal or unconstitutional. but which is a necessary part of every code, under whatever name it is disguised. The legislature of this country consists of the queen, lords, and commons in parliament assembled, and the statutes which they pass have been likened by sir Matthew Hale to written contracts or indentures, the general public being bound, by their respective agents, as if by solemn deed. There is no legal mode of altering the previously existing law, except by a statute passed with the consent of par liament; but there are other ways of modifying the law, so far as mere details of admin istration are concerned—as, for example, by orders in council, by ordinances, by char ters, and by by-laws issued under some inherent or statutory power belonging to corpo rations. The mode in which a statute is made belongs properly to the head of proced ure in parliament. Statutes or acts of parliament are all founded on the theory that the legislature has an inherent right to alter all previous laws or statutes; and though some times great and leading statutes have been declared to be unalterable by any future par liament, this restriction is obviously utterly futile, and inconsistent with the idea of a legislature. Statutes are usually divided, according to the number of persons affected by them, into public and private—the former applying to the whole public, the latter only to the persons named or described. There is also a subdivision of both into local and personal statutes. Statutes are also divided into declaratory, penal, or remedial, according to the nature of their object. There are certain important rules as to the interpretation of statutes, the chief business of the various courts of law and equity being to construe or interpret the statutes. A statute begins to operate from the time
when it receives the royal assent, unless it state some other time for its commencement; but formerly each statute was presumed to take effect from the beginning of the session of parliament in which it passed, until the rule was changed, in 1793, by the act 33 Geo.
c. 13. The leading rule in construing statutes is, that the words are to be taken iu their ordinary grammatical sense, unless the context shows that they are used in some other sense. All other rules resolve more or less into this. There is also a well-known rule that penal statutes are to be construed less strictly than other statutes of a remedial kind. Another rule is, that a subsequent statute repeals one that is prior, either expressly or by necessary implication, if the prior one is inconsistent in substance.
i Though t might seem an easy task to construe or interpret what is meant by a statute, it is in practice so far from being easy that it requires a special training and long expe rience to arrive at an accurate mode of construction, the chief business of lawyers bcifig to acquire this art; and one excels another solely or chiefly by virtue of the tact, skill, and accuracy of thinking which are required to do such work in perfection. All the main disputes in litigation turn chiefly on the different interpretations put by parties on statutes or contracts, both of which are construed according to precisely the same rules. Another rule applicable to statutes is, that each remains in force until it is repealed, either expressly or impliedly. So much confusion, however, has arisen out of the mul tiplicity of statutes, and it is so difficult for lawyers to discover what statutes have been so impliedly repealed, that of late years a process of revision and examination has been instituted by the government with a view to repeal expressly all that is obsolete and that is already only impliedly repealed, so as to reduce the bulk of the statutes, which have now grown to an inconvenient size. This task is preliminary to a codification of those statutes which remain after such revision and expurgation.