Page:Legislative Acts of the Governor General of India in Council, 1834-1851.djvu/9

 PREFACE.

present is a collection of the Acts of the Legislative Council of India, from 1834 to the end of 1867. Repealed Acts and parts of Acts are omitted, but the Abstracts are retained, a plan which, I believe, has given satisfaction in former editions. I have admitted exceptions to the former part of this general rule, by the reprint of such repealed Acts and parts of Acts as concern titles to property, or in other respects have a permanent value for reference; and a few others of merely historical value may have been retained in the present, but will not in any subsequent volume. By this plan I have anticipated, to a considerable extent, the objects of a Bill now in course of being passed by the Legislative Council, for the repeal of some 180 Acts, which have become inoperative by change of circumstances, or have expired. The greater part of them have been suppressed in this Edition, and thereby the Bill referred to is anticipated.

The title which I have given to the present Collection is synonymous with "Acts of the Legislative Council of India." The Council came into existence in 1834 (the date at which this Collection begins), under 3 and 4 W. 4, c. 85, as a distinct body separate from that of the Executive Government of India; and the legislative powers of the Presidency Governments, through the exercise of which each Presidency had previously been supplied with Regulations (so called and not Acts), at the same time ceased.