n a fragment of it.
Few practical questions can be answered by a lawyer without a search
into numberless acts of parliament and reported cases. To laymen, of
course, the whole law is a sealed book. As there are no authoritative
general principles, it happens that the few legal maxims known to the
public, being apprehended out of relation to their authorities, are as
often likely to be wrong as to be right. It is hopeless to think of
making it possible for every man to be his own lawyer, but we can at
least try to make it possible for a lawyer to know the whole law. The
earlier advocates of codification founded their case mainly on the evils
of judiciary law, _i.e._ the law contained in the reported decisions of
the judges. Bentham's bitter antipathy to judicial legislation is well
known. Austin's thirty-ninth lecture (_Lectures_, ed. 1869) contains an
exhaustive criticism of the tenable objections to judiciary law. All
such law is embedded in decisions on particular cases, from which it
must be extracted by a tedious and difficult process of induction. Being
created for particular cases it is necessarily uncomprehensive,
imperfect, uncertain and bulky. These are evils which are incident to
the nature of judiciary laws. The defective form of the existing statute
law, moreover, has also given rise to loud complaints. Year by year the
mass of legislation grows larger, and as long as the basis of a system
is judiciary law, it is impossible that the new statutes can be
completely integrated therewith. The mode of framing acts of parliament,
and especially the practice of legislating by reference to previous
acts, likewise produce much uncertainty and disorder. Some progress has,
however, been made by the passing from time to time of various acts
codifying branches of law, such as the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, the
Partnership Act 1890, the Trusts Act 1893, and the Interpretation Act
1889.

The Statute Law Revision Committee also perform a useful work in
excising dead law from the statute-book, partly by repeal of obsolete
and spent acts and parts of acts, and partly by pruning redundant
preambles and words. The construction of a section of an act may depend
on the preamble and the context, and the repeal of the preamble and
certain parts of the act may therefore affect the construction of what
is left. This is provided for by a clause which is said to have been
settled by Lord Westbury. It provides (in effect) that the repe