Page:Revised Statutes of the State of North Carolina - Volume 1.djvu/19

Rh reported to the legislature, and with the report were transmitted the required number of printed copies of each of the revised acts for the use of the members. These acts, with the accompanying report, were referred to a joint select committee of six members from each house, by whom they were examined and reported from time to time, to one or the other of the houses, with such amendments as the committee thought proper to suggest, and were then passed separately, according to the forms usual in passing bills, except that they were not required to be engrossed after passing one house before they were sent to the other. After the revised statutes had been all acted upon by the legislature, an act entitled " An act concerning the Revised Statutes" was passed, which prescribes the time when they shall go into operation, provides for their publication and distribution, repeals all the British acts, and all the acts of our own legislature, the subjects of which had been revised, and directs that when published, the printed copies shall be received as evidence of the law. From this it will be perceived that the work now presented to the public has the very highest character of authenticity and authority.

It remains only for the undersigned to add a few remarks as to the manner in which their duties as superintendents of publication have been discharged. By reference to the ninth and tenth sections of the "Act concerning the Revised Statutes," will be seen the authority under which they were appointed, and the particular duties prescribed them. They have endeavored to comply strictly with the requisitions of that act. How far they have succeeded, it must be for others to determine. As regards the style of execution, and arrangement of the work, it will show for itself. The "Act concerning the Revised Statutes" has been placed as chapter first of the statutes contained in the first volume, and the revised acts themselves follow in alphabetical order. The other public acts, which were passed at the same session, and required to be inserted in the same volume with the revised statutes, have been either incorporated with them or published as separate chapters under the same general title where similarity of subject admitted, or have been placed under distinct heads but still in their proper alphabetical order. In annexing the references to the decisions of the supreme court, it was intended to place the cases referred to, in the margin opposite to the sections to which they related, but it was found that it could not be done without too much encumbering the page, and the references were therefore placed at the end of the respective chapters, but still noting the particular sections which they are designed to elucidate.

In preparing the materials directed to be published in the second volume, the superintendents found some difficulty in ascertaining and determining what acts