CONDITIONS AND METHODS OF LAW MAKING one year. In 1906, we began sitting in the middle of February and we sat on until the middle of December, with a holiday of only two months and a half interposed. Other details regarding these private bills must be left unnoticed, that I may pass on to the larger question of public general legislation, which is what most interests you and I as lawyers. The quality of statute law may be con sidered in respect: First, of its Form; secondly, of its Substance. As respects Form, you, as lawyers, know that a statute ought to be clear, concise, consistent. Its meaning should be evident, should be expressed in the fewest possible words, should contain nothing in which one clause contradicts another or which is re pugnant to any other provision of the statute law, except such provisions as it is expressly intended to repeal. To secure these merits two things are needed, viz: That a bill as introduced should be skillfully drafted, and that pains' should be taken to see that all amendments made are also properly drafted, and that the wording is carefully revised at the last stage and before the bill is enacted. Of these objects the former is in England pretty well secured by the modern practice of having all government bills — these being the most important and the large majority of those that pass — prepared by the official draftsman, called the Parlia mentary Counsel to the Treasury. Nearly all our important bills, nearly all the con troverted bills that pass are bills brought in by the government of the day. A pri vate member has now hardly any chance of passing legislation. Therefore, you may take it that all important legislation is pre pared, pushed through, and .passed by the government. The government has an offi cial permanent drafting staff, consisting of two or three able and highly trained lawyers, whose business it is to put its bills in the best shape. If ' they are not always in the best shape, that is not the fault of the draftsman,
because the best scientific shape is not neces sarily the shape in which it is most easy to pass a bill through Parliament. A bill may be so prepared in point of form as to excite more or less opposition and sometimes it is just as well to take a little pains so to arrange the clauses as to give the least open front to hostile criticism, and also, to afford the fewest opposition for taking divisions in committees. It is one of our rules of Parliament that every clause has to be separately put to vote in committee, therefore the more clauses, the more divisions. Hence if you put a great deal into one clause subdividing it into subsections, and parts of subsections by numbers and letters, instead of letting each matter enacted have a clause for itself you have fewer debates on each clause and fewer divisions. That explains what you might otherwise think scientifically objectionable in the structure of recent acts. It is not possible in legisla tion, passed by a popular assembly, to attain that high standard of scientific per fection which could be attained by an absolute potentate like a Roman Emperor. This question of parliamentary drafting is really an important one. We certainly have succeeded in bringing our statute law into a great deal better shape since we created our office of parliamentary draftsman. He has sometimes extremely important func tions to discharge. It often happens that the minister who is preparing a bill has not com pletely thought out all the bill, and even if he be a lawyer may not have in his mind all the relations which the bill he desires to enact will have, to various branches of a very complicated system of law. The busi ness of the parliamentary draftsman is not only to take the ideas and plans of the minister and put them into the clearest and most concise form but also . to warn the minister of all the consequences his pro position will have upon every part of the law, and to lead him to see what is the best way in which the amendment to the law he desires to effect can be effected. Thus if the parlia
