"understanded of the people"; also, that it did not contain a thousand
contradictions and uncertainties. When our--I will not say wiser, but
certainly better educated--forefathers met in national convention to
adopt a constitution, one of the first things they did was to appoint
a "Committee on Style." It is needless to say that no such committee
exists in any American legislature. You would suppose they would take
pains to see that all the laws were printed in one or more books where
the people could find them. This is not the case in New York or in
many of our greater States. You would also suppose that when they
passed another law on the same subject they would say how much of the
former law they meant to repeal, but in many States that also is not
done. It would probably be too much to hope that they should not
confuse the subject with a new law on a matter already completely
covered; but the form of their legislation should be improved at least
in the first three particulars I have mentioned.

What is the fact? The secretary of one new State reports that the
laws, as served up to him by the legislature, are "so full of
contradictions, omissions, repetitions, bad grammar, and bad spelling"
that it has been impossible for him to print them and make any sense;
the bad grammar and the bad spelling, at least, he has, therefore,
presumed to correct. But what should surprise us still more is, that
in very few of our States is there any authentic edition of the laws
whatever, and quite a number do not publish their constitutions!

The worst condition of all is found in the national legislation of
Congress, until very recently in the great State of New York, and in
those States which have adopted the code system generally. I do not
say this as an opponent of general codes, but I am constrained to note
as a fact that those States are the ones which have their legislation
in the worst shape of any. The charm of the statute theory is that
the half-educated lawyer or layman supposes he can find all the laws
written in one book. Abraham Lincoln even is said to have had the
major part of his "shelf of best books" composed of an old copy of the
statutes of Indiana, though I can find no traces of such reading in
the style of his Gettysburg address. But how far is this democratic
claim that the laws of a State are all contained in one book borne out
by the facts?

Of our fifty States and Territories only Alabama, Arizona, the
Dis