trict of Columbia, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, New York (partially), North
Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont, and Wisconsin
(sixteen States) have any official revision or "General Laws"; that
is to say, one or more volumes containing the complete mass of
legislation, up to the time of their issue, formally enacted by the
legislature. A number of other States have what are called "authorized
revisions" or authorized editions of the law. This phrase I use to
mean a codification by one or more men (usually a commission of three)
who are duly appointed for the purpose, under a valid act of the
State legislature, but whose compilation, when made, is never in form
adopted by the legislature itself. Leaving out the constitutional
question whether such a book is in any sense law at all--for in all
probability no legislature can delegate to any three gentlemen the
power to make laws, even one law, much more all the laws of the
State--leaving out the constitutional question. It is very doubtful
how far such compilations are reliable, although printed in a book
said to be authorized and official, and held out to the public as
such. That is to say, if the real law, as originally enacted, differs
in any sense or meaning from the law as set forth in this so-called
"authorized publication," the latter will have no validity. Indeed,
some States say this expressly. They provide that these compilations,
although authorized, are only admissible _in evidence_ of what the
statutes of the State really are--that is to say, only valid if
uncontradicted. It was impossible to correspond with all the States
upon this point--if, indeed, I could have got opinions from their
respective supreme courts, for no other opinion would be of any value.
The compilation of the State of Arkansas says, somewhere near its
title-page, that it is "approved by Sam W. Williams." It does not
appear who Sam W. Williams is, what authority he had to approve it, or
whether his approval gave to the laws contained in that bulky volume
any increased validity. This is a typical example of the "authorized"
revision, and this is the state of things that exists in such
important States as Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii,
Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New
Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia,
and Wyoming (twenty in all).

Before leavin