with any move ^ ques obseration ( I wait the further developement of this hire, before troubling it, beyond taking leave with your
7. 2-2 upon respect to direct
I give the utmost Moral attention to the following points in the history of this measure recently clicited, by the Public discussion which it has provoked in the Colony.
It now appears that this Ordinance, emanating from a closed Council Chamber, was a forgery - and its penalties operative for three days before it was even promulgated. It passed the Legislative Council on the 16th of April, but was not gazetted as law until the 19th. It first appeared in draft in the Government Gazette of 29th March - disappeared from the time intervening Gazettes of 5th and 12th April, and for anything the Community could positively know to the contrary was withdrawn altogether, when it suddenly made its appearance as law on the 19th of April - and as a retrospective law.
His Excellency is surprised that it elicited no animadversion, to call its "discussion" into question, during what he is pleased to term its "experimental" period.
168 By Metropolitan Building Act 1855 upon which this experimental Ordinance purports to have been modelled, and an Act of the Indian Legislature, No 14 of 1856 - framed only five months later and expressly adjusted to the circumstances of an infant population, are dated respectively four months and seventeen days after their promulgation - and after that interval both these Acts will be found expressly to exclude all Buildings that had advanced above the level of their foundation from within even the compass of their operation, much less being held "liable to their penalties."
Is it greater wisdom to follow precedents with the arm of our law, or to contract these wise local Executive measures under one head for expat facts penaly, under another; and making