greater risks would be encountered. If a com-
mittee, or the legislature, were likely to fall into
error, from ignorance of the prior law how much
more likely would they be to commit mistakes,
when the whole existence of the prior law would
depend upon their knowledge of it, or sufficient
re-enactment of its terms when it was discovered?
He would take the case of another corpora-
tion, since the gentleman from Frederick had
alluded to the mischief, which supplements to a
charter might affect. The laws relating to the
Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Company, fill a
considerable volume. They affect every portion
of the economy and management of that road,
Now, at the last session of the legislature, a
brief law of some dozen lines was passed, prescri-
bing the time of the annual selection of the di-
rectors of this company. It was a supplement
to the act of 1826, which incorporated the com-
pany. Who here can say, what parts of the
old act this disturbed, so as to require a republi-
cation ?
It might incidentally alter the whole relation
of the company to the State—its largest stock-
holder—or it might, as was probable the case, be
a measure of mere inconvenience only.
Yet this proposition would have entailed upon
the projector of this law, a laborious and difficult
analysis of the very numerous acts of Assembly,
relating to that Company, in order that all por-
tions connected with it in the old system, might
be preserved; or else, by their omission, they
would have been constructively repealed. And,
if a safer course were pursued, and the whole of the
law were re-enacted in one grand railroad law, the
statute book would be over-loaded. So again, in
reference to any other charter. If a bank had a
privilege given to it, which was an extension of
an old liberty, it would require for its safety that
all its old chartered privileges should be re-enact-
ed. He could conceive nothing more cumbrous.
than such legislation. The laws of one session
would be the same of almost all that had gone
before, with the lucubrations of the year added.
In more serious matters the case would be
worse. Take the testamentary law; it began in
the last century, and its supplements are very
numerous. Many of its sections contain provi-
sions, explicable to different classes of objects.
The thread of connection is difficult to trace.
Suppose that a new inconvenience were to occur
if, as a member of the legislature, he was satis-
fied by his own experience, assisted by the judg-
ment of abler counsel, that this inconvenience
could be remedied, he would not have hesitated,
under direction and advice, to introduce such an
amendment. But if the proposition of the gen-
tleman from Caroline, carries, who would
amend such a law? The risk would be too
great.
If all the provisions properly belonging to the
amendment were not re-enacted, they would be
considered as repealed. But to re-enact them
might demand a patient analysis of sections, which
very few men were capable of performing; and
yet, if this were not done, the tenure of property—
the most solemn formalities of the testamentary,
system—the course of distribution—the probate

of claims—the regulation of accounts—might all
be disordered, and the most serious and irremedi-
able embarrassments involve the whole system.
The only escape would be the re-enactment of
the whole law—a labor utterly useless in itself.
Public convenience is readily gratified by digests,
which derive their authority from the character
of the compiler. The plan offered by himself
ensured the certainty of the law. He understood
that this re-enactment was only intended as a
public convenience. But since the whole system
would be codified—why, by re-enactment make
a partial digest, when the re-enactment itself
would be digested in the formation of acode?
The code would be made in some three or four
years—and the old system or legislation would
serve till then. The inconvenience had been
endured for nearly two centuries, and it could
surely be borne with for four years longer at
most.
The objection to the amendment of the gentle-
man from Washington, (Mr. Schley,) was that it
did not provide for a codification of laws passed,
after the code of existing laws was framed. It
directed that there should be, every ten years,
a publication and promulgation of the statute
laws of the State, which were then in force. But
if there was to be a code, lie could not see why
subsequent laws should not be codified by the
Legislature which paused them.
No commissioners would understand their
meaning better, and it was certainly running a
useless circuit, for one Legislature to enact .a
law—another to appoint men to codify it—and a
third to accept it as codified—when the first
could have engrafted it, on the code itself, by legis-
lating in that way, instead of pursuing the usual
forms of a general act. The one plan was as
convenient as the other, and more likely to lead
to a correct understanding of the law, and to its
symetrical growth.
In offering his proposition, he could frankly
say, that he did it to achieve a union of conflict-
ing opinions, and he had freely acccepted every
suggestion which did not interfere with the main
plan.
Mr. THOMAS said a few words in reply, in
which he said he. would not publish the whole
statute, but merely the sections in it which were
to be amended.
Mr. DENT said:
He would move an amendment to the substi-
tute offered by the gentleman from Baltimore
city, (Mr. Gwinn,) the same amendment, which
upon his, (Mr. D.'s,) motion, had been engrafted
upon the amendment of the gentleman from
Washington. He, (Mr. D.,) preferred it should
come in at the end of the substitute. There was
some doubt which of these amendments would be
adopted; be, therefore, wished to see his amend-
ment incorporated upon both propositions. He
was sure there would be no opposition.
Mr. GWINN accepted the amendment of Mr.
DENT, as a modification of his own proposi-
tion.
The question then recurred on the modified