husetts and some
as other States. Third, the local or private acts should be separated
from the public laws, and they might advantageously even be printed in
a separate volume, as is done in some States already. But who shall
determine whether it is a private, local or special act, or a general
law? I can only answer that that must be left to the legislature
until we adopt the system strongly to be recommended of a permanent,
preliminary, expert draftsman. Finally, no legislation must ever be
_absolutely_ delegated. That is to say, even if a revision is drawn up
by an authorized commission, their work should be afterward ratified
by the legislature. It is said, I think, that the constitution of
Virginia, drawn up by a constitutional convention, was never ratified
by the people. If so, there is a grave constitutional doubt whether it
or any part of it may not be repealed at any time by a simple statute.
But can a constituent body of the mass of the people, the fundamental
and original political entity of the Anglo-Saxon world, be forbidden
from delegating its legislative power, as its representatives
themselves are forbidden?

The last matter, that of arrangement, order of printing, and form of
title, is so directly connected with that of indexing that I shall
treat the two things together. Now, there are three different methods
of arrangement, or lack of arrangement, to be found in printing
the laws of our forty-six States and four Territories, both in the
revisions and in the annual laws. The revisions, however, are more apt
to have a _topical_ arrangement, and to be divided into chapters,
with titles, each containing a special subject and arranged, either
topically, or, in some States, even so intelligent otherwise as are
Pennsylvania and New Jersey, arranged with the elementary stupidity of
the alphabetical system. I say, stupid; when, for instance, you have a
chapter on "Corporations," no one can tell whether the legislature or
compilers are going to put it under "C" for corporations, under "I"
for incorporations, or under "J" for joint-stock companies. The
alphabetical system of arrangement is the most contemptible of all,
and should be relegated to a limbo at once. The annual laws, of
course, are much less likely to have any arrangement whatever. Passed
chronologically, they are more apt to follow in the order of their
passage.

Now these systems as we find them are as follows: in nearly all States
public and p