Page:Revised Statutes of the State of North Carolina - Volume 1.djvu/13

Rh the assembly, the council and assembly being separate bodies, and were subject to the approval or disapproval of the king in council. As the session of the General Assembly held at Newbern on the seventh day of March, 1746, after a preamble that "Where for want of the laws of the Province being revised and printed, the magistrates are often at a loss how to discharge their duty, and the people transgress many of them through want of knowing the same," it is enacted, "That the Honourable Enoch Hall, Esq., and Mr Thomas Barker, or the majority of them, be and they are hereby nominated and appointed commissioners to revise and print the several acts of assembly in force in this province." They are required to "revise the said acts of assembly, and compile them into one body, and make an index, marginal notes and references thereto, and to the lay the same before the next succeeding General Assembly after they shall have so revised and compiled them, to be ratified and confirmed." By subsequent sections the laws so revised and ratified are to be printed and distributed, and the copies so printed are to be received in evidence before any judicature. This act was passed on the earnest and repeated recommendations of Governor Johnston. Of the commissioners so appointed, Edward Mosely and Samuel Swann alone appear to have acted, and Mosely having died before the completion of the work, Samuel Swann reported to the General Assembly at their session on the sixteenth of October, 1749. At that session an act was passed to confirm this revisal. The preamble states that "Whereas the whole body of the laws of this province to the seventh day of March in the year of Lord one thousand seven hundred and fortysix have, in pursuance of the act, &c. &c., been carefully compiled and revised, and the revisal laid before both houses of this present Assembly and approved by the said houses." The act then recites the acts revised and confirmed, directs them to be printed and the printed copies to be evidence. It repeals all acts not confirmed, and saves the rights of parties, &c. In pursuance of this act, the code of laws so revised was printed and published at Newbern by James Davis in the year 1752, under the following title: