n6
THE GREEN BAG
mentary draftsman is a man of real ability and power, who understands public ques tions, who has studied the subject he is asked to draw the bill upon, who is able to under stand what the real difficulties are and how those difficulties can be met, he is able to give the most valuable assistance to the minister, and I can assure you, having from time to time to be responsible for important measures in the House of Commons, I. de rived the greatest possible assistance from the parliamentary draftsmen. Of the living I will not speak, but one of the former draftsmen, Sir Henry Jenkyns, was one of the very ablest, perhaps the ablest man, in the permanent Civil Service of the United Kingdom. As respects amendments in committee and final revision, our English procedure is not satisfactory. There ought to be some means of correcting, before a measure finally passes, those inelegancies, redun dancies and ambiguities which the process of amending in committee usually causes. But as Parliament has, so far, refused to allow any authority outside itself to alter the wording in the smallest point of form, all that can be done is to use the last stage of the bill to cure such blemishes as can be discovered. Doubtless the same difficul ties arise here. I am not fully informed as to how they are dealt with, but have learnt with great interest of the efforts recently made in Wisconsin, under the zealous initi ative of Mr. McCarthy, and in this State, also, to supply by a bureau of legislation assistance to members of the legislature in the preparation of their bills. The value of this seems to have been already recog nized in both States, and I hear that there are now seven States in all where arrange ments are made by State authority for such help. This shows that the legislatures are awakening to the great importance of using every device which scientific method can apply for seeing that legislation is prop erly conducted. Now let us come to the Substance of
legislation, and start from two propositions which every one will admit: 1. There is in all free countries a great demand for legislation on all sorts of subjects, mainly due to the changes in economic conditions and to the impatience of re formers to have all sorts of evils dealt with by law. 2. The difficulty of framing good laws is enormous, because the work is in most countries no longer the comparatively easy task of repealing old laws which hampered and constrained the citizens — destruction is simple work — but the far harder task of creating a new set of laws which shall guide and help men to attaining the ends they are bent on. Seventy years ago people thought that the great thing was to get freedom. When they had got it they were dissatisfied, and instead of simply let ting everything and everybody alone to work out their own weal or woe, on indi vidualist principles, they forthwith set to work to forbid some things which had been tolerated before and to throw upon govern ment all sorts of new functions more diffi cult and delicate than those of which they had stripped it. Whether the disposition to increase the range of governmental action is right or wrong, I am not here to discuss. The cur rent is, at least for the moment, irresistible, as appears from the fact that it prevails alike in Western Europe, in England, in the British colonies, and in the United States. The demand for a profusion of legislation is inevitable; and the difficulty of having it good, undeniable. In what does the difficulty consist? In three things. First, of those who demand legislation, many do not under stand exactly what is the evil they desire to cure, the good they seek to attain. Secondly, when they do understand the evil they seldom know what is the proper remedy, when they seek the laudable end they seldom perceive the best means to it. Thirdly, the number of measures, remedial
