Evening Post. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1908.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 45, 21 August 1908, Page 4

Evening Post. FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1908.

COMPARATIVE LEGISLATION.

Whatever may be Lord Rosabery's defects as a politician, he has the one supremo merit of being interesting. Be the occasion great or small, he invariably manages to interest, and that in a fashion so happy, and as a rule so brilliant, as to make one marvel the more after! each fresh display that a man of snch splendid talent should have been doomed since his brief term as Premier to thirteen years of futile isolation. Whenever he speaks he is listened to. Now that Mr. Chamberlain is on the shelf, there is nobody who is heard with greater attention or more fully reported or more widely quoted. Yet he continues all the while, in his own. phrase, to plough his furrow alone, with the rosult that his spasmodic brilliance startles or entertains, and sometimes surprises, both friend and foe, but produces no lasting result proportioned to his powers. Two of his latest performances deal with different aspects of the multiplicity of modern legislation. In his inaugural address as Lord Chancellor of Glasgow University on 12th June he delivered an earnest plea for the maintenance of tho Scotch spirit of self-reliance against the spoon-feeding and crutchpropping tendencies of tho State-aided schemes of the day. "The ancient sculp- ! tors represent Hercules leaning on his ' club, our modern Hercules would have his club elongated and duplicated, and resting under his arms." Lord Rosebery desires to see the Scotch Hercules content with a single club, aad retain- | ,ing the strength to use it in the oldfashioned way. The steady encroachments of State action upon the sphere of individual initiative he very happily describes by saying that "the nation is being taken into custody by tho State." He hopes to see the Universities of Scotland, mindful of the national traditions, so impressing upon their alumni the virtues of independence and self-reliance that d, stubborn resistance may be offered to the enervating process. From the chair of the Society of Comparative Legislation, Lord Rosebery dealt with the statistical side of the j I enormous legislative output of modern times, and the value of the work accomplished by the society in the direction of co-ordinating and digesting it. The principal work of the Society of Comparative Legislation, which Lord Rosebery described as "one of the few societies that one could praise unstintedly and wihtout reservation," is to provide a full and accurate summary year by year of the legislation in the British Empire, the United States, and foreign countries. By the timo the Secretariat of the Imperial Conference gets into working order, one may hope to see it undertaking this laborious and important work, so far as it directly concerns the i British Empire, but for the present, as Lord Rosebery says, the society alone, of all human agencies, undertakes the responsibility. With sixty Legislatures in operation within the British Empire, fifty in the United States, and a dozen in the Austrian Empire, and scores of others in countries content with one each, the field is indeed immense. For our own Empire alone the task is no light one. "In 1906," said Lord Rosebery, "there were 2000 laws or ordinances passed within the British Empire, of which probably 99 per cent, were infringements of the liberty of the subject. (Laughter.) ... No Parliament was half so active as the British. The Ministry, whatever party it belonged to, reckoned its Acts at the end of a session as sportsmen reckoned their bag." ' We are quite accustomed in New Zealand to complacent calculations of this description. The bulk of last session's statute book has been the subject of loud congratulation on the part of the Ministry and its supporters, j with just as little reason as Opposition critics have displayed in taxing tho slender output of leaner years. But those who value these statistical tests i will find excellent material in Lord J Rosebery's figures. If the British Empire, with a population of 410,000,000, i turn out 2000 laws a year, what should be New Zealand's share with a population of less than 1,000,000? On a proportional basis it would be something ! less than five, yet such is the virtue of our people such the wisdom, and energy of our Legislature, that no less than 114 Acts were placed on the New Zealand statute book last session. Lord Rosebery may talk as he pleases of the { activity of the British Parliament, but it will have to pass at least 5000 Acts a year for the 44,000,000 people under its immediate control if it desires to keep pace with ours. Thus, by a very ! simple sum in proportion, New Zealand's supremacy is again conclusively [ demonstrated. There are, however, even in this country some critics who are oldfashioned enough to refuse to regard arithmetic and avoirdupois as sufficient tests of legislative wisdom. If, as the poet says, It is not growing like a tree la bulk, doth make Man better be, the same may be true of that characteristic product of civilised man's activity, the statute book. Quality may after all be as important an element in legislation. From this point of view, the consolidation of the statutes which will bo effected this session will really be a more vital matter than any additions that may be made in the shape of absolutely new work. For the guidance of the wayfarer through the maze of scattered and conflicting laws which adorn our statute book, a Society of Comparative Legislation limited to New Zealand alono might profitably havo beeu established, But the ftCJ?ointmen^

of commissioners under the Reprint of Statutes Act of 1895 has been a still better step, and the enactment of their labours in the shape of five volumes of consolidated statutes will be a boon beyond price to everybody who is ever concerned to get a knowledge of the law.