In 1868 it was determined by Lord Cairns, then Lord Chancellor, that a revised edition of the statutes of the realm should be published containing only such statutes as were actually in force.

In looking over the first volume, which contains statutes passed between 1235 and 1685, one is struck by the number of stringent Acts of Parliament forming part of our present law, which nevertheless are habitually neglected.

Now that the destroying hands of the Gladstonian iconoclasts are stayed there can be no more useful task than to look around us and see how many of these relics of the embodied wisdom of our ancestors still remain to us, rusted indeed but ready for our use.

In enumerating a few of these enactments I have two objects in view. First, I would remind those whose province it is to administer law and justice to the subjects of Queen Victoria of powers with which they are armed; and, secondly, I would offer timely warning to those against whom these powers, when again exercised, which the present healthy state of public feeling assures us they will be, must inevitably be directed.

To begin then. Can there be a more appalling spectacle than the “Monstrous Regiment of Women?” Well, we have our weapons of defence ready in 3 Henry VIII. c. 11., 34 and 35 Henry VIII. c. 8, and 5 Elizabeth c. 4. s. 17. What a sound and vigorous ring is there in the first of these statutes with the pains and penalties it enacts against ignorant persons practising physic or surgery, “such,” it goes on to say, “as common artificers, smythes, wevers and women.” And how discreetly liberal is the second of these statutes, which indicates a legitimate field for women’s activity, and allows them, in common with all other unqualified persons, to cure outward sores, such as “a pyn and the web in the eye, uncoomes of hands, scaldings, burnings, sore mouths, saucelin, morfew” and the like, by herbs, ointments, baths, poultices, and plasters. But most practical, perhaps, of all these three statutes is the statute of Elizabeth, which, making no exception, sweeps within its enactments all women under the age of forty who have failed to fulfil the great end of their being, matrimony.

“And bee it further enacted that twoo justices of the peace the maior or other head officer of any citie burghe or towne corporate and twoo aldermen, or twoo other discrete burgesses of the same citie burghe or towne corporate yf ther be no aldermen, shall and may by vertue hereof appoint any suche woman as is of thage of twelfe yeres and under thage of fourtye yeres and unmarried and foorthe of service, as they shall thinck meete to serve, to be reteyned or serve by the yere or by the weeke or daye, for such wages and in such reasonable sorte and maner as they shall thinck meete: And yf any such woman shall refuse so to serve, then yt shalbe lawfull for the said justices of peace maior or head officers to comit suche woman to warde untill she shalbe bounden to serve as aforesaid.”

The effect of enforcing this law would be salutary indeed. Under the existing state of things men are frequently employed upon duties so disagreeable and ill-paid that Providence can only have intended them for women. Why then do we not take advantage of the power, nay, the duty of sending women to their proper sphere and mission which is entrusted to our magistrates and discreet burgesses? As the wages will be fixed by these authorities, the burden to the rate-payers need not be great. And we should thus silence the demand which, I am told, women are beginning to make not only for work (as if their male relations were not always ready and willing to find them plenty), but even for remunerative work.

But I pass from our women to our agricultural labourers. We have lately heard much debate on the conduct of commanding officers who, when labourers at harvest-time were holding out for wages, allowed their soldiers to help in getting in the harvest. But such aid would never have been required had not the fifteenth section of the same statute of Elizabeth been unaccountably overlooked.

“Provided always that in the time of hey or corne harvest, the justices of peace and every of them, and also the cunstable or other head officer of every towneshipe, upon request and for thavoyding of the los of any corne grayne or heye, shall and may cause all suche artificers and persons as be meete to labour, by the discretions of the said justices or cunstables or other head officers or by any of them, to serve by the daye for the mowing reaping shearing getting or inning of corne grayne and heye, according to the skill and qualite of the person; and that none of the said persons shall refuse so to doo, upon payne to suffer imprisonement in the stockes by the space of twoo dayes and one night.”

Nor need our farmers at any other times in the year fear a deficiency of labour if they will but invoke the aid of the fifth section of the same statute, whereby every person between the ages of twelve and sixty not being employed in any of a few callings mentioned in the Act, nor being a gentleman born, nor being a student or scholar in any of the universities or in any school, nor having real estate worth forty shillings a year or goods and chattels worth £10, nor being the heir-apparent of any one with real estate worth £10 a year or goods and chattels worth £40, is declared compellable to be retained to serve in husbandry by the year with any person that keepeth husbandry.

Again we have Acts of 1275 and 1378 (3 Edward I., and 2 Richard II.), as our defences against those who are described as “devisors of false news and of horrible and false lies of prelates dukes earls barons” and, comprehensively, “other nobles and great men of the realm,” and also of various officials enumerated, with a like comprehensive “and of other great officers of the realm.” The Act of Richard II. reiterates and confirms that of Edward I., and under these Acts “all persons so hardy as to devise speak or tell any false news, lies, or such other false things” about great people, incur the penalty of imprisonment “until they have brought him into Court who was the first author of the tale.” What a check would the carrying out of these provisions put upon the impertinences of Own Correspondents, social reformers, gossips, novelists, caricaturists, and moralists! It will be a happy day for England when the many thoughtless or malignant persons who now permit themselves to retail stories inconvenient to members of the aristocracy or to the dignitaries of the country, suffer the punishment of their infraction of the law. To take but one instance of the great need there exists for the protection of our upper classes—an instance, as it chances, which enables me to show that I would not wish the private character of even a political enemy to be traduced—I may remind you that if the statutes of Scandalum Magnatum were enforced there would not now be at large persons ascribing to the late Prime Minister himself the authorship of the Greenwich stanza on the Straits of Malacca.

There are many other statutes on which I might enlarge. I might remind coroners of duties which they have forgotten, and the clergy of rights which they are allowing to lapse, but time will not permit me.

It is true that when I read my Statute Book I meet with some provisions of which I do not comprehend the necessity. As a Protestant I do not see why I should be imprisoned for three years and fined besides, if I carry off a nun from a convent with her consent; and as a botanist I do not see why, since January, 1660, I have been prohibited from setting or planting so much as a single tobacco plant in my garden. Still, all are parts of one stupendous whole, parts of the sacred fabric built by our forefathers in “Auld Lang Syne.” Touch one stone and the British Constitution may crumble. And as a humble member of the Great Constitutional Party I desire to raise my protest against the canker of decay being left to eat insidiously into our ancient and revered legislative code, by our suffering any Acts of Parliament which appear on our Statute Book as parts of the living Law of the Land to drop into disuse, as if, contrary to the doctrine of the highest legal authorities, an Act of Parliament unrepealed could become obsolete.