Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/495

 T A S T A 471 Colonies and Dependencies. Acts of the imperial parliament do not extend to the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, or the colonies, unless they are specially named therein. By 28 and 29 Viet. c. 3 any colonial law repugnant to the provisions of any Act of Parliament extending to the colony is void to the extent of such repugnancy, and no colonial law is to be void by repugnancy to the law of England unless it be repugnant to such au Act of Parliament. For colonies without representative legislatures the crown usually legislates, subject to the consent of parliament in particular cases. For instance, it was the opinion of the judicial committee of the privy council in 1876 that a cession of British territory in India to a native state would probably need the con- currence of the imperial parliament (Damodhar Gordhan v. Deorani Kanji, Law Rep., 1 Appeal Cases, 332). United States. By the constitutions of many States English statute law, as it existed at the time of the separation from England, and as far as it is applicable, has been adopted as part of the law of the States. The United States and the State are not bound by an Act of Congress or a State law unless specially named. The States legislate for themselves within the limits of their own constitution and that of the United States. Here appears the striking difference between the binding force of a statute of the United Kingdom and an Act passed by congress or a State legis- lature. In the United Kingdom parliament is supreme; in the United States an Act is only of authority if it is in accordance with the constitution. The courts may declare an Act void if it contravene the constitution of the United States or of a State, so that practically the Supreme Court of the United States is the ultimate legislative authority. Examples of recent cases where the constitutionality of an Act has been contested will be found under PAYMENT and PRIVILEGE. The restrictions upon legisla- tion contained in the constitution of the United States provide against the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, except in case of rebellion or invasion, the passing of a bill of attainder or ex post facto law, the imposition of capitation or other direct tax, unless in accordance with a previous article of the constitution, or of a tax or duty on exports, the preference of the ports of one State over those of another, tlie drawing of money from the treasury except by appropriations made by law, and the grant of a title of nobility. The amended constitution contains further limitations, e.g., the taking of private property for public use without just compensa- tion, and the abridging of the right of citizens on account of race, colour, or previous condition of servitude. State legislation is limited by 10: "No State shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts, pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of con- tracts, or grant any title of nobility." The section further forbids imposition of duties on imports or exports or any duty of tonnage without consent of congress. State constitutions often contain further restrictions ; among the more usual are provisions against laws with a retrospective operation, or impairing the obligation of contracts, or dealing with more than one subject to be expressed in the title. The time when a statute is to take effect after its passing is often fixed by State constitutions. The statutes of the United States were revised under the powers of an Act of Congress passed in 1874 (sess. i. c. 333), and the volume of Revised Statutes (frequently amended since) was issued on February 22, 1875. Many of the States have also issued revised editions of their statutes. The rules of construction are in general agreement with those adopted in England. See Sedgwick, Statutory Law. International Law. The term statute is used by international jurists and civilians to denote the whole body of the municipal law of the state. In this sense statutes are either real, personal, or mixed. A real statute is that part of the law which deals directly with property, whether movable or immovable. A personal statute has for its object a person, and deals with questions of status, such as marriage, legitimacy, or infancy. A mixed statute affects both property and person, or, according to some authorities, it deals with acts and obligations. Personal statutes are of universal valid- ity ; real statutes have no extra-territorial authority. The deter- mination of the class under which a particular law ought to fall is one of great difficulty, and one in which there is often a conflict of legal opinion. On the whole the division appears to have created more difficulties than it has solved, and it is rejected by Savigny as unsatisfactory. See Story, Conflict of Laws, 12-16; Philli- more, International Law, vol. iv. ch. xvi. ( J. Wt. ) STATUTE MERCHANT AND STATUTE STAPLE were two old forms of security, long obsolete in practice, though references to them still occur in some modern statutes. They were originally permitted only among traders, for the benefit of commerce, but afterwards extended by 23 Hen. VIII. c. 6 to all subjects, whether traders or not. The creditor under either form of security was allowed to seize the goods and hold the lands of a defaulting debtor until satisfaction of his debt. While he held the lands he was termed tenant by statute mer- chant or by statute staple. In addition to the loss of his goods and lands the debtor was liable to be imprisoned. STAUNTON, a city of the United States, the county- seat of Augusta county, Virginia, lies at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, on the Lewis Creek (a tributary of the Shenandoah), 136 miles west-north-west of Richmond. It is the seat of the State lunatic asylum and of the State institution for the deaf and dumb and blind, and has besides an unusual number of important educational establishments. Iron-works, planing-mills, and flour-mill. r ; represent the manufacturing interest. The population wa;; 5120 in 1870 and G664 in 1880. STAUNTON, HOWARD (1810-1874), Shakespearean scholar and writer on chess, was born about 1810. He was educated at Eton and Oxford, but left the university without taking a degree and settled in London, devoting much of his attention to the study of the English drama- tists of the Elizabethan age. In conjunction with this he also took a great interest in the stage, and as an amateur once played Lorenzo to the Shylock of Edmund Kean. Between 1857 and 1860 he edited in monthly parts an edition of Shakespeare published by Routledge, which has been several times reissued, and must be ranked as superior, as regards both text and notes, to any previously published. His skill as a Shakespearean commentator, combining in a remarkable degree the acuteness and caution which qualified him to excel in chess, and dis- ciplined to rare perfection by a thorough mastery of the literature of the period, is still more strikingly shown in his papers in the Athenaeum on " Unsuspected Corruptions of Shakespeare's Text," commenced in October 1872. These formed part of the materials intended to be made use of in an improved edition of Shakespeare's works which he proposed to prepare, but which for a variety of reasons was never published. In 1864 he published a facsimile of the Shakespeare folio of 1623, and a finely illustrated work entitled Memorials of Shakspeare. He was also the author of the Great Schools of England, an Account of the Foundation, Endowments, and Discipline of the Chief Seminaries of Learning in England, 1865. An account of his career as a chess-player, and a notice of his chief publications on the game, will be found under the heading CHESS (vol. v. pp. 601, 603). He died in London 22d June 1874. STAVANGER, a seaport town of Norway, the adminis- trative centre of an " amt " of the same name (population 114,164 in 1876), is situated on the west coast, on the south side of a beautiful fjord, about 127 miles north-west of Christiansand. A railway to connect Stavanger with Christiania has been planned, but as yet only the terminal portions have been constructed, the Stavanger portion, which runs south to Ekersund for 47 miles, being opened in 1878. The town is for the most part a collection of narrow and irregular streets, but signs of the wealth acquired by its shipping trade and herring fishery appear in the well-built stone houses erected since the great fire of 1860. In 1884 314 vessels (70,006 tons) entered the harbour and 267 (57,479 tons) cleared. Though the bishop's see was removed from Stavanger to Christiansand in 1685, the old cathedral of St Swithun's, founded by the English bishop Reinald in the end of the llth century, and rebuilt after being burned down in 1272, still remains, and, next to the cathedral of Trondhjem, is the most interesting piece of Gothic architecture in Norway. The old episcopal palace of Kongsgaard is now a Latin school. The com. munal hospital is an important institution. The town dates from the 8th or 9th century and became the seat of a bishopric in the 13th. In 1801 the population of