acts and to four special appropriations out of twenty-four. Sixteen out of nineteen special acts, however, had them, and all but one of thirty-three legalizing acts. It would be to the advantage of technique if everywhere they should be abandoned. As in the case of punctuation marks, their legal significance is small and doubtful. In England the courts do not regard a preamble as true enough to govern their construction of other parts of an act, though for other purposes it has been held to be evidence of matter referred to therein.1 Doubtless the same view would prevail in most of the American courts.

WHEN LAWS TAKE EFFECT

UNTIL comparatively recent days it was the English rule that, when an act did not provide to the contrary, it was to be taken to operate from the beginning of the session in which it was passed. Consequently, where the session was long, an act that did not receive the royal assent until near the close of the session might have the effect of rendering illegal an action committed many months previously and lawful when it was committed. This cause of palpable injustice was remedied by the statute 33 George III, s. 13, which provides that every act shall begin from the date of the royal assent to it, where no other date of beginning is provided. The Federal Constitution has no specific provision as to the time when a statute shall take effect, and an act of Congress is therefore deemed effectual and in force from the time of its approval by the President, unless otherwise provided. This is also the rule under State Constitutions having no specific provision on the subject.

The old writers say that the reason why an Act of Parliament requires no public notification to the country is because it is deemed to be made by the whole nation, so that every person is present at the making of it. Such a theory worked little hardship when new laws were comparatively few, and so it is not surprising that the early American Constitutions contained nothing on the subject. Mississippi appears to have been the first State to feel the need, providing in 1832 that "no law of a general nature, unless otherwise provided for, shall be enforced until sixty days after the passage thereof." Iowa was the next to act in the matter, specifying in her first Constitution (1846): "No law of the General Assembly shall take effect until the same be published and 1 Arthur Symonds, The Mechanics of Lawmaking. 51.

circulated in the several counties of the State, by authority. If the General Assembly shall deem any law of immediate importance, they may provide that the same shall take effect by publication in the newspapers of the State." The last sentence was retained in the Constitution of 1857, but the rest of it was replaced by provision that laws "of a public nature" should take effect on the 4th of July following a regular session- ninety days after adjournment of a special session. Two years later Wisconsin said, "No general law shall be in force until published"; and Illinois required an interval of sixty days after the end of the session, save in case of emergency. Thereafter the idea made rapid headway, more than a score of other States putting it into their Constitutions in one form or another. Fifteen in all have so far chosen the ninety-day interval. Half a dozen do not permit laws to take effect until publication, and about a dozen others make constitutional provisions for publication. All the States with the time limit recognize in one way or another the possibility of emergencies and make exceptions for them. These have caused no end of subterfuge. Indeed they have come so near nullifying the purpose of the provisions as to make it doubtful whether these are worth while at all. At least one State has gone to the length of declaring every act an emergency, thus putting legislation on a level with the States where by statutes laws take effect on passage.

The polyglot nature of the population in certain parts of the country led to a few constitutional provisions for the use of other than the English language. In Colorado the laws were to be published in Spanish and German, as well as in English, until 1900. In Louisiana the Legislature may provide for the publication in French. New Mexico (1910) required that for twenty years all laws should be published in both English and Spanish. Certain Missouri charters are to be published in German, and likewise amendments proposed to the Constitution of Maryland. Four of the States, Illinois, Michigan, Louisiana, and California, stipulate that legislative proceedings shall be conducted in the English language only, and that their records shall be so preserved.

CHAPTER XXV

HELP FOR LAWMAKERS

LAWMAKERS are coming to realize that they need help. The everwidening range of human knowledge, the ever-growing store of human experience, make it more and more prudent to have at command a copious supply of information. For this reason the library now takes a prominent place in the equipment of the lawmaking body. In this capacity it was at the start a mere collection of books, for the use of whoever might apply. James Madison as chairman of a committee reported a list of books "proper for the use of Congress," and advised their purchase. Certain authorities on international law, treaties, negotiations, and other questions of legislation were declared by the report to be absolutely indispensable, and it was averred that the want of them "was manifest in several Acts of Congress." Not, however, until 1801 was the Library of Congress established. It came into existence chiefly through the efforts of John Randolph, of Roanoke, author of the saying "A good library is a statesman's workshop." By means of an appropriation of five thousand dollars the Library of Congress started with 212 folios, 164 quartos, 581 octavos, 7 duodecimos, and 9 magazines, according to the first catalogue. Now it has nearly three million books and pamphlets, and is one of the five great libraries of the world.

Libraries have likewise grown up beside the State Legislatures, many of them now important collections, some suitably housed, as at Albany, others still suffering from the lack of sympathetic treatment, but practically all of them making vigorous struggle to meet their great opportunities. For many years they were hampered by the theory common to all libraries of a public nature, that they were merely storage places in charge of custodians. Toward the end of the nineteenth century this theory began to give way to the notion that a librarian should be something more than a warehouse-man- that he should help. Of the State Librarians it was Melvil Dewey who, in 1890, first gave definite shape to a program of effort, by establishing a Reference Bureau in the library at Albany.

Eleven years later came the next big step in advance, taken by Wisconsin, with the credit belonging to Dr. Charles McCarthy, who developed the possibilities of help to legislators in a fashion that has stirred emulation in most of the other States of the Union. His theory was that statute law should be based upon the best experience of all mankind, and he set to work systematically to put this experience within the easy reach of every lawmaker. He organized the sources and supply of information to great advantage. More than that, he organized the methods of applying the information. In other words, he carried the work of the Reference Bureau into the actual making of the laws, on the technical side. His Burcau became charged with billdrafting, and in the course of a decade so successfully met the responsibility that in one session it drew 1915 out of 2024 bills and resolutions. Other States copied the idea and now about one third of the total give to their Legislative Reference Bureaus a definite part in the framing of legislation. Whether this is the better method depends on certain general considerations about the writing of laws.

THE END AND THE MEANS

LAWMAKING involves two factors first, the determination of the purpose, and secondly, the provision of a method to achieve that purpose; more pithily, the end and the means. It has been contended with much force that only one of these factors, the determination of the purpose, the end, should devolve upon Legislature, Congress, or Parliament. Thus John Stuart Mill in "Representative Government" (ch. v) emphatically declared that in legislation as well as administration the only task to which a legislative assembly can possibly be competent is not that of doing the work, but of causing it to be done; of determining to whom or what sort of people it shall be confided, and giving or withholding the national sanction to it when performed. In his "Autobiography" (p. 264) he returned to the idea, averring that there is a "distinction between the function of making laws, for which a numerous popular assembly is radically unfit, and that of getting good laws made, which is its proper duty and cannot be satisfactorily fulfilled by any other authority."

The theory is logical, but in practical application it would run afoul of the difficulty that the primary purpose of a law usually carries in its train several or many secondary purposes, and these

it may be important for the representative assembly to decide. For example, take old-age pensions. Having agreed to provide them, it is vital to determine whether the system shall be contributory or non-contributory; that is, whether those who may become pensioners shall separately pay part of the cost, or the cost shall all be met out of the public treasury. Indeed, willingness to adopt any system at all may depend on which system it is to be. The discussion of the means may be inextricably involved with the discussion of the end. The two may shade into each other so that in the twilight zone it is impossible to say which is means and which is end. Where they might be easily and wisely discriminated, still would remain blocking the path of reform the stubborn refusal of most assemblies to forego the exercise of petty power. It must be assumed that legislative bodies will continue to belittle themselves with a great mass of rule-making in the nature of administrative detail.

For these reasons it is unlikely that we shall in our time see any experiment with Mill's plan of having all the laws made by a small Commission. Yet the plan has enough significance to be worth understanding. He held that such a body would be one of the fundamental elements of any government fit for a high stage of civilization. It should not of itself have any power of enacting laws: it would only embody the element of intelligence in their construction; Parliament would represent that of will. No measure would become a law until expressly sanctioned by Parliament; and Parliament, or either House, would have the power, not only of rejecting, but of sending back a bill to the Commission for reconsideration or improvement. Either House might also exercise its initiative, by referring any subject to the Commission, with directions to prepare a law. Once framed, Parliament should have no power to alter the measure, but could only pass or reject it; or if it were partly disapproved, remit it to the Commission for reconsideration. An attractive program, is it not? So reasonable, indeed, in principle that although the precise thing Mill urged is not in sight, there need be no surprise or regret if on examination we find the current setting strongly in the direction of the end he had in view.

The lessons of the business and professional world are at work. It is an era of specialization and the subdivision of labor. The expert is coming into his own. Even some legislators are beginning to admit that no one man can do all things equally well.