316
Memorandum
A revision of the laws in order to be satisfactory must
be accompanied by a complete Interpretation and Common Form Ordi-
nance, which should not only lay down certain guiding principles
governing the language used in legislation and the forms of certain
sections which are recurrent, but must also apply them to existing
Ordinances.
rkiem
The main criticism which I have to make on the existing
Interpretation Ordinance, No.1 of 1897, is that it divides legisla-
tion into two classes, that passed prior to the date of its coming
into force, and that passed afterwards. This follows the English In-
trepretation Act of 1869; but there was a definite reason for doing
this at home. That Act is a piece of legislation simply, and acts as a guide to the Courts in intrepreting existing legislation, and a guide to the Partiamentary draftsman in his future work. The greatest care was required in dealing with the enormous bulk of the English statues; but the reasons which guided the draftsman of our Ordinance and induced him to split it up into "Existing Interpretations", "Existing Rules of Construction", "New Interpretations", and "New Rules of Construction" is not always very apparent and has in dne case caused serious difficulty, leading to No.20 of 1908 being pas- sed. It is most bewildering, and diminishes the practical utility of the Ordinance. But directly Revision is taken in hand these sub- divisions become worse than useless, and unmanageable. It must be be borne in mind that the English statutes have never been systematicall "revised". A good deal has been done by means of "Statute Law Revision Acts", but it is intermittent, and fragmentary, and it is admitted that it is lamentably incomplete. I have it on the best authority that a few M.P.s are obstructionists in this matter and do all in their power to prevent even the Law Revision Commission from further using their pruning knife on the Statute Book. Therefore the sixteen or twenty volumes know as the "Statutes Revised", although published By authority", are no more than an edition of the statutes which