refused when the redress required was of a legislative, and not merely a judicial character.'

At this time the duties of the triers and receivers of petitions, on whom the investigation of grievances devolved, were very onerous. Such petitions related generally to private affairs only. The practice had not begun of petitioning the Legislature for general changes in the law, for reform of abuses in Church or State, or in favour of particular measures of national policy. On these great matters of state, Parliament proceeded on the mere motion of the Crown, the Peerage, or the Commons; whilst in that of merely private questions, the parties interested themselves proceeded in the first instance by way of petition; and if, after the receivers and triers of petitions reported that the sanction of the Legislature was required, the legislative Act was carried expressly on such petition.

The special concessions and dispensations from time to time made by the Legislature to private individuals were of a very various character. The settlement of hereditary honours 3 and estates, the disentangling of property from legal difficulties, the empowering municipal bodies to effect local improvements by the compulsory purchase of land, were all the subjects of special clauses in statutes of the class we are now speaking of.

The turbulent reigns of Edward IV. and Richard III. served to extend the system of private legislation by Parliament. To use the expression of Reeves, the legal historian :

"The notions of what was law and what was legislation, had become too well settled and distinguished for it to be longer endured that the law should be altered by any judgment less than a legislative Act; or that any transaction

1 See 2 Inst. 408., and authorities there cited.

2 Receivers and triers of petitions were first constituted in the 33rd year of Edward I. (see Rot. Parl. 33 Edw. I., m. 1., 4 Inst. 11.); they are still formally appointed by the House of Lords (see Lords' Journal, vol. lxxiii. p. 579.), but their functions have long ceased to be actively exercised. See May's "Law of Parliament," p. 382., 2nd edition.

3 The ancient Earldom of Oxford was, by a special Act of Parliament in the 16th year of Rich. II., settled on Sir Aubrey de Vere and his heirs male for ever; see the case of Lord Willoughby of Eresby reported by Sir T. Jones, p.

should have the force of an Act which was not assented to by the whole Parliament." 1 This extraordinary measure was adopted in order to effect the destruction of the Duke of Clarence, and the jurisdiction of Parliament having been fully established, both in the case of petitions in private matters and in the prosecution of offenders, it became the settled principle of the Constitution that the law could not be strained or altered, either to effect any of the frequent attainders of that period, or to change the legal settlement or descent of property, or for the concession of any private rights by any less authority than a formal and complete Act of the Legislature.2

Under the Tudors the practice of legislating for particular occasions by Private Acts of Parliament had very much increased, and this high sanction was then habitually obtained for schemes for local improvement similar to those which have been submitted to Parliament in the present century 3; but the bulk of what were then principally deemed Private Acts of Parliament related solely to private estates. Queen Elizabeth is recorded to have given her royal consent to nineteen of such Bills in one day, and refused forty-eight which had passed both Houses. The applications to Parliament in the year immediately succeeding the Restoration, for Private Acts for setting aside conveyances alleged to have been made through fraud or coercion during the civil war, are stated by Lord Clarendon to have exceedingly "disquieted and discomposed the House, every man being so much concerned for the interest of his friends or allies that he was more solicitous for the despatch of those than of any which related to the king and the public.5" Lord Clarendon's remarks may perhaps call to mind the patriotic zeal of some gentlemen of

Reeve's "History of English Law," vol. iii. ch. xxii. p. 379.

2 Id. ib.

3 See Dewe's Journal, 87. Townsend's "Historical Collections," passim. 4 Townsend's Collections, p. 49.

66

5 See Continuation of Lord Clarendon's Life, vol. ii. p. 152. 8vo. Every man had raised an equity in his own imagination that he thought ought to prevail against and descent, testament, or Act of Law; and that whatever any man had been brought to do which common reason would make manifest that he would never have done if he could have chosen, was argument sufficient of such

Parliamentary influence in our own days of railway legislation, when Capel Court had more representatives in Parliament than the Corn Law League or the Carlton Club.

Instances of what are now called Local Acts are of far less frequent occurrence in early times than Estate and other merely Private Acts. Statutes specially relating to the city of London passed on the petition of the mayor, aldermen, and commonalty, are, indeed, to be met with in the rolls of Parliament as early as the thirteenth century', and the communities of other cities and towns, following the example of the chief city, were in the habit of applying for similar powers, which, in some instances, were conceded and in others were refused.2 Acts of Parliament, relating specially to county roads, bridges, hospitals, &c., are to be found for the first time among the printed statutes during the Lancaster dynasty; but the Rolls of Parliament contain earlier records of similar special laws.1

The practice of Parliament conferring compulsory powers on the promoters of public works was only gradually adopted. In the case of public highways these powers were, indeed, given by a general law passed in 12855, and subsequently very much increased; but compulsory powers in Private

a form, and ought to find relief in Parliament from the unbounded equity they were masters of, and could dispense whatever formalities of Law had preceded or accompanied the transaction." Continuation of Lord Clarendon's Life, vol. p. 154.

ii.

1 See stat. 6 Edw. I., c. 4.; Rot. Parl. 43 Edw. III., m. .; 50 Edw. III., m. 84., which was fully considered by the judges in re Islington Market Bill, 1 Cl. and F. 518. stat. 17. Ric. II., c. 12, 13.; Rot. Parl. 7 Rich. II., m. 37.; Rot. Parl. 9 Henry IV., m. 30.; see case of Duchy of Lancaster, Plowden's Com. 214.

2 See Rot. Parl. 18 Edw. I., fol. 3., and other cases cited, Roll. Abr. Prerog. U. Rot. Parl. 50 Edw. III., m. 209., as to burgesses of Calais.

Rot. Parl. 4 Edw. II., fol. 83.; Roll. Abr. 178.; Rot. Parl. 8 Edw. II., m. 2. dorso num. 7.

Statute of Wynton, 13 Edw. I., stat. 2. c. 5. pulsory powers ex necessitate, at Common Law, King's Prerogative in case of Saltpetre.

As to the extent of the com

see 12 Coke Rep. 12 a. 13

* By 5 Eliz. c. 13. s. 3., it was provided that supervisors might take rubbish in other men's lands for mending of highways. By 13 & 14 Car. II., c. 6., it

Acts of Parliament are of very modern practice, being formerly only conferred in order to carry out undertakings of recognised public bodies, such as the Corporation of London, &c. &c. By a Private Act, 35 Hen. VIII. c. 10., the mayor and citizens of London were empowered to enter into the grounds as well of the King as of every other person, where they should find springs, and there dig pits and ditches, erect heads, lay pipes, and make vaults, and do all things necessary for the conveyance of water to the city. The 3 Jac. I. c. 18. and 4 Jac. I. c. 12., also relating to the city of London, empowered the corporation to form a trench or channel to convey water from Chadwell and Amwell to London, making satisfaction to the owners of the ground through which the water of the New River was brought; and, allowing for the great chasm in such private enterprises caused by the troubles in the middle of the seventeenth century, the statute-books contain a pretty regular series of Private Acts for effecting local improvements and regulating public works from the time when the forming of a solitary canal attracted the general attention of the whole nation, to the present period, when the carriage of passengers and goods, and the formation of thousands of turnpike and railroads, the supply of light and water, and the regulation of endless schemes of a merely commercial character, are made the special subjects of Private Acts of Parliament.

Both by the practice of Parliament, and the doctrines of law recognised in Westminster Hall, a broad distinction is at the present day preserved between a Public General Statute and a Private or Special Statute; though some difficulty has occasionally arisen in determining whether Bills brought into Parliament, or Statutes which have received the sanction of the Legislature can be deemed to come within one or the other of these divisions, and the older cases on this subject are not very easy to reconcile.

It may, perhaps, now be laid down, that all statutes which

was provided that when highways were not of the breadth of eight yards, the surveyors of the highways should lay out the adjoining lands. These powers were still further increased by 8 & 9 W. III., c. 16., by which provisions were made for the compulsory purchase of land required for the purpose of highways.

concern the whole community, the Crown', the Parliament, or either branch of it2, trade in general3, or the whole members of any particular branch of trade, profession, or avocation*, religion in general, or all the professors of any particular religion, the general administration of justice, or all officers engaged therein, the army, the navy, the police of the whole kingdom', the general public health, &c., come within the designation of Public Statutes, but that statutes which affect only private individuals, or classes of individuals (e. g. estate and divorce Acts, college-leaving Acts, trading companies? Acts), and of the inhabitants of a particular locality (e. 9. the Metropolitan Building Act, Acts for establishing Courts of Requests, lighting, watching, sewers' Acts, &c.), or the formation of particular public works by private promoters (as Acts relating to markets, harbours, bridges, railways, canals, &c.,) are Private and not Public Statutes.

A distinct practice appears to have been followed at a very early period in the mode of recording merely Private Statutes. All Public General Acts were enrolled at length, and formally certified into Chancery for greater publicity, the enrolment becoming the original record, whilst merely Private Bills were, after passing both Houses of Parliament, and receiving the Royal Assent, handed over to the clerk of the Parliament to be preserved in his office, such of them only being returned by certiorari into Chancery for enrolment as were specially

1 Doctr. Plac. 339.; 4 Rep. 77.; Holland's Case 8 Report, 28. 138.; Needler . Bp. of Winchester, Holbart, 227.

2 Morris v. Hunt, 1 Chitty R. 453.

3 Holland's Case 8 Report, 76. The 1 Eliz., c. 19., relating to the bishops as

a class, was indeed held to be a Private Act. Id. ib.

4 E.g.

the 14 & 15 Hen. VIII., c. 5., as to all physicians. College of Physicians v. Harrison, Moody and Malkin, 191.

The Toleration Act (1 W. & M. c. 18.), indeed, was in one case held to be a Private Act. Rex v. Larwood, 1 Salk. 168.

The 23 Hen. VI., c. 10., relating to sheriff's bonds was for a long time treated in our Courts as a Private Act, but was at length declared to be a Public Act. See the cases collected, 2 Saunders, 155. n. 6.

7 In Barnett v. Cox, 9 Queen's Bench Reports, 617., 16 Law Journ. N. S. 27., the Metropolitan Police Acts were held not to be Local and Personal Acts. Richards v. Eusto, 15 Meesom, N. W. fol. 244. ; 3 D. & L. 515.

9 Cuff v. Gent, 12 M. & W. 34., 13 Law Journ. N. S., Exch. 24.