Page:William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (3rd ed, 1768, vol I).djvu/101

§. 3. us next proceed to the , the written laws of the kingdom, which are tatutes, acts, or edicts, made by the king’s majety by and with the advice and conent of the lords piritual and temporal and commons in parliament aembled. The oldet of thee now extant, and printed in our tatute books, is the famous magna carta, as confirmed in parliament 9 Hen. III: though doubtles there were many acts before that time, the records of which are now lot, and the determinations of them perhaps at preent currently received for the maxims of the old common law.

manner of making thee tatutes will be better conidered hereafter, when we examine the contitution of parliaments. At preent we will only take notice of the different kinds of tatutes; and of ome general rules with regard to their contruction The method of citing thee acts of parliament is various. Many of our antient tatutes are called after the name of the place, where the parliament was held that made them; as the tatutes of Merton and Marlbridge, of Wetminter, Gloceter, and Wincheter. Others are denominated entirely from their ubject; as the tatutes of Wales and Ireland, the , and the . Some are ditinguihed by their initial words; a method of citing very antient, being ued by the Jews in denominating the books of the pentateuch; by the chritian church in ditinguihing their hymns and divine offices; by the Romanits in decribing their papal bulles; and in hort by the whole body of antient civilians and canonits, among whom this method of citation generally prevailed, not only with regard to chapters, but inferior ections alo: in imitation of all which we till call ome of our old tatutes by their initial words, as the tatute of , and that of . But the mot uual method of citing them, epecially ince the time of Edward the econd, is by naming the year of the king’s reign in which the tatute was made, together with the chapter, or particular act, according to it’s numeral order; as, 9 Geo. II. c. 4. For all the acts of one eion of parliament taken together make properly but one tatute; and therefore when two eions have been held in one year; we uually mention tat. 1. or 2. Thus the bill of rights is cited, as 1 W. & M. t. 2. c. 2. ignifying that it is the econd chapter or act, of the econd tatute or the laws made in the econd eions of parliament, held in the firt year of king Wiiliam and queen Mary. .

, as to their everal kinds. Statutes are either general or pecial, public or private. A general or public act is an uni- veral