An arbitrary statute taking the property of A and giving it to B, or even to the public, without compensation has, from the time of Lord Coke himself, been the classic definition of an unjustifiable law and one which with us at least is unconstitutional; but our courts wisely refuse to judge if, when a proper police motive is disclosed in the statute, it is the best method of effecting the result.

The most important statute of the United States is perhaps the most horrible example of slovenliness, bad form, and contradiction of all.

These statutes are not merely infamous outrages on every principle of justice and humanity, but are gross and palpable violations of the State constitution, and manifest an absence of moral sentiment in the Ohio legislature as deplorable as it is alarming.

This statute is a consolidation of all previous laws, and it begins by recognizing the principle that the fixing of wages is a mistake and all such laws are repealed so far as they relate to terms of hiring and wages.

Statutes would be but recommendations if every man was at liberty to understand and obey them as he thought proper.

to Thee my wishes flow, Who dost my life prolong; Thy witness let me live below, Thy statutes be my song.

The conspiracy statute which is used today is a deliberate scheme on the part of prosecutors to get men into the penitentiary by charging an agreement or confederation of two or more persons to do something, which, if really committed, would be a misdemeanor, or no crime whatever.

That is as I told you: everybody was supposed to know the law, and early written statutes were either mere compilations of already existing law, slight modifications of them, or else in the nature of imposing various penaltiesall of which assume that you know the law already.

But the statutes of the Reformation era relating to jurisdiction, having as statutes the assent of the laity, and accepted by the canons of the clergy, are the standard to which the Church has bound herself as a religious society to conform.

Now, many State laws and constitutions, as well as most State courts, recognize that the common-law statutes of England existing at least before 1775, if not 1620, are common law in the States of this Union.

The Statute of Mortmain, aimed at the holding of land in large quantities by religious corporations, was a true constructive statute, and the principle it establishes has grown ever since.

Now, all statutes are limitations on a state of pure individualism, defining this latter word to mean a state of society recognizing personal liberty and private property, and allowing all possible freedom of action and contract relating thereto; with a court administration for the purpose of protecting such liberty and enforcing such contracts in the courts.

But statutes are precisely the subject of this book; legislation, the tendency of statute-making, the spirit of statutes that we have made, that we are making, and that we are likely to make, or that are now being proposed; so it is concerned, in a sense, with the last and most recent and most ready-made of all legal or political matters.

When, too, we remember that English was still, to a great degree, tabooed in England itself; that the official and familiar language of the Normans was French, that French of which the Statutes of Kilkenny are themselves a specimen, the difficulty of keeping within the law at this point must, it will be owned, have been considerable.

This Statute, although it produced little effect at the time, is an extremely important one to understand, as it enables us to realize the state to which the country had then got, and explains, moreover, a good deal that would otherwise be obscure or confusing in the after history of Ireland.

A statute is no doubt a beautiful object, but you do not want to take it to a dance.

A statute of this State enacts, "that no black or mulatto person or persons shall hereafter be permitted to be sworn, or give evidence in any court of Record or elsewhere, in this State, in any cause depending, or matter of controversy, when either party to the same is a WHITE person; or in any prosecution of the State against any WHITE person.

Any statute which proposes to do this is a mere nullity; it takes away no right, it confers none.

From one point of view it seems true, as has often been said, that in essence these statutes were simply enactments of long established principles of the common law.

Nine years before this statute is the Assize of Bread and Beer, attempting to fix the price of bread according to the cost of wheat, but notable to us as containing both the first pure-food statute and the first statute against "forestalling.

This Statute of Westminster is a landmark, as showing how slow the Commons were in even allowing taxation upon imports at all.

But when we come to the statutes applying to combinations solely, and defining them, there have been many statutes declaring blacklisting and boycotts to be unlawfulwhich is merely the common lawand a few statutes especially forbidding them.

In other respects, those great statutes were not so much the introduction of new principles, as a recognition of privileges of the people which had been long established, but which, in too many instances, had been disregarded and violated.

"1831.'Let Thy statutes be my delight in the house of my pilgrimage.'

All these facts were admitted by demurrer, and Brass contended that if any man's property were ever to be held to be appropriated by the public without compensation, and under no form of law at all save a predatory statute, it should be his; but the Supreme Court voted the Dakota statute to be a reasonable exercise of the Police Power, and dismissed Brass to his fate.