LEGISLATIVE RECORDS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 5730, 27 October 1905, Page 7

LEGISLATIVE RECORDS.

(From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, September 15. You legislate much faster in New lauds than wo do in the old. The chief feature of the new number of the “Journal of Comparative Legislature” is a review of the legislation of 1903, from which it appears that the total output of laws and resolutions by the Legislatures of the United States was 14,394, the resolutions having, in many instances, the effect of laws. The Legislature of Massachusetts alone passed 810 laws and resolutions, and achieved this legislative performance in 170 days. The “Mother of Parliaments” passed only 47 acts of public importance in 1903. Only five new statutes are summarised in the section devoted to Italy, no more than three pieces of French legislation are dealt with, while of Germany, it is written, ".there was no legislation of general interest this year.” Legislators are much busier in onr colonies than at Westminster. In New Zealand no fewer than 95 public acts were passed, and in the Dominion of Canada the law-abiding citizen had 74 new laws to obey. From this annual review of legislation one gets a vivid idea of tne vast and varied interests of the Empire. While, for instance, in Australia the elaborate practice of its High Court was settled, the fusion of law and equity provided for, and a new class of ‘patent attorneys” created, in South Nigeria a proclamation was passed prohibiting “trial by the ordeal of Bass-wood, eser© bean, or other poison, boiling oil, firfc, immersion in water, or exposure to the attacks of crocodiles or other wild animals. ”