vi PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

liberal a profession as that of the Law will discharge the debt,
I do not allow myself to doubt. As to the public, I shall con-
tent myself with quoting the language of the Legislature of
1794 — language that deserves a better place than in the pre-
amble of a forgotten Resolution of the General Assembly —
"In a free government all legislative acts, which respect the
lives, liberties and estates of the people, ought to be published,
and a knowledge of them diffused generally through the
State."

It is well known, that the question of the application of
the English Statutes to the Province was continually agitated
between the Proprietors, and their adherents, and, what was
termed, the country party; the views of the former, as observed
by Kilty, Introd. to Kep. p. vi., "having been to discourage the
extention of these Statutes, in order that their power of assent-
ing to lavs might become more important, and the country
party being unwilling that such Statutes should be particu-
larly enumerated, so as to limit the courts in their power of
judging of the consistency of them with the good of the people;

a power, which was essential to the proper discharge of their
duties, and which had been expressly given by several Acts of
Assembly."' My purpose was to have given an account of the
various disputes between these two parties on this subject;

but my book has already gone beyond the limits originally
assigned to it, and, perhaps, I am mistaken in the amount of
interest, which such an account would excite.

The rules, which governed the courts in former times in their
admission or rejection of particular Statutes, or parts of Stat-
utes, as applicable or inapplicable to the circumstances of the
people of the Province, are stated by Kilty in the Introduction
to his Report. After the Revolution, the necessity of what
may be termed a standard became more apparent, and several
persons appear to have projected some report or collection of
such of the Statutes as were in force. The matter was in time
taken up by the Legislature, and by Resolution No. 22 of Nov.
Sess. 1794 (printed as No. 10 in the Appendix to the Laws,
prepared by Kilty, Harris and Watkins under the direction
of the Legislature), to which I have before alluded, it was
referred to the Chancellor, the Judges of the General Court,
and the Attorney General, who were directed to "make report
to the General Assembly of such of the English Statutes as