1866, and followed it as the chief director of all subsequent proceedings in both houses of Congress for seven years, Judge Poland had an interest in consummating what all regarded as a great work which no other member of either branch could claim.

With him were associated Judges E. Rockwood Hoar, of Massachusetts; Lawrence, of Ohio; Duell, of New York; Barber, of Wisconsin; Pendleton, of Rhode Island; Moore, of Pennsylvania; Cason, of Indiana; Stephens, of Georgia, and Sayler, of Ohio. These were the active members whose personal attention, with the exception of Mr. Stephens, was given with unusual faithfulness to the work of verifi-. cation until it was finished and had been enacted in detail by the House. Most of them were judges of some years' experience on the bench, and dividing the work among sub-committees it was proposed to accept nothing as conclusive until the text of each portion was again compared with the original statute from which it was derived. The work of deciding was to a great extent judicial in its character, with the additional difficulty of being required to construe a statute without a case and without argument. Whether the parts of any act selected by the Commissioners and by them reported as being still in force were so in fact, could not safely be taken for granted in any case. No test so severe, both as to familiarity with the ordinary construction of these statutes and as to legal discrimination in regard to the intrinsic incompatibility of acts which had successively overlapped each other for nearly a century, without codification or specific repeal, has at any time been applied to a body acting with the necessary haste of a committee of Congress during an active session. Indeed, under no circumstances and at no time has a like effort been made, since it was soon found that the entire work of the commission would require free amendment and large correction of errors.

The writer had the honor to be called to the assistance of the Committee on Revision in January, 1874, and to be charged with the especial duty of verifying so much of the draft as related to revenue and the revenue laws, the tariff and associated subjects. This portion covered more than three hundred pages of the revision as printed, including in its list of distinctive portions first Title XXXIII, Duties on Imports; Title XXXIV., Collection of Duties on Imports; Title XLVIII., Regulation of Commerce and Navigation; Title XLIX., Regulation of Vessels in Foreign Commerce; Title LV., Regulation

of Vessels in Domestic Commerce; Title LI., Regulation of Fisheries; Title LII., Regulation of Steam Vessels; and Title LIII., Merchant Seamen. These eight "Titles" embraced thirty-three chapters and one thousand one hundred and ten sections. The first title named is the consolidated tariff acts, embracing all the laws in force December 1, 1873, imposing duties on imports; while the next Title, XXXIV., embraces and defines the entire system of collection of duties, the ports and districts, the officers with their qualifications, pay and duties, and the entire system of procedure. These laws are many of them as old as the foundation of the government, and they are necessarily very voluminous. In these two divisions, covering about two hundred pages of the Statutes as revised, the greatest number of corrections of the original draft of the Commissioners was required, and the relation of the earlier to the later laws was the most difficult to determine. In regard to these I reported three hundred and eighty-six amendments, striking out eighty-nine entire sections, and inserting five entire sections of laws in force not found in the Commissioners' draft. The remaining amendments affected single clauses only, yet many of them were highly important.

In the several titles other than these two the number of changes was comparatively small, but the total number of amendments reported by me and adopted by the committee into the draft finally enacted, was four hundred, of which ninety-seven were entire sections struck out, and six entire sections inserted.

act.

The extreme difficulty of this work, so far as it related to the revenue systems, may be judged when it is stated that most of the fundamental laws on this subject were of very early date, remaining unaltered from the Acts of February 18, 1793, and March 2, 1799. Almost every one of the hundred of subsequent acts refers in terms to former acts as being amended only, not repealed, by any later And upon all these, also, the least proportion of judicial interpretation was available as a guide, the greater portion of all requirements and directions having been accepted without any contest arising to elicit the decision of a United States Court. The result was much modification of the Commissioners' draft, many sections retained by them being struck out, as obsolete or inconsistent with later acts, while a few sections dropped by them were restored to their place as laws still in force.

In all this later work the energy and determination of the dis

tinguished chairman, Judge Poland, were always conspicuous, and it must in justice be said that the final decision as to what was and what was not the law, was his own and not the Commissioners or any one of them. His able associates of the committee shared in responsibility, but none took a leading part. And the House, to which he made report at intervals, as enough of the verification should be completed for its action, in all cases sustained his report. The Senate, still more indisposed to review his work, enacted the revision in a body precisely as it came from the House, and the whole became the law June 23, 1874, without amendment from the report of the Committee on Revision.

The several portions of the general work were reported to the House of Representatives at special sessions held for the purpose on January 29th and January 30th; February, 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th; on March 5th and 19th, and on April 2d the session of that day completing the work on the part of the House, and transmitting the further duty of concurrence or dissent to the Senate. The Senate committee did not, in fact, take up the text of the revision so perfected by Judge Poland's committee at all, but contented itself with reporting the whole body of the bill to the Senate for action. After a brief debate the Senate passed the bill without amendment and it was signed by the President and became a law June 23, 1874.

Very important conditions in regard to these statutes are, however, embodied in Title LXXIV., the Repeal Provisions, and for easy reference as to many points not possible to explain in this paper, the several sections of this title are reproduced here. It will be seen how closely they follow out the original bill or Act of 1866, directing the revision to be made, and being prepared by Judge Poland, as that act was, they fittingly identify the whole of this work as being substantially his. It is a monument of most conspicuous foresight in legislation, and of the highest judicial ability in verifying and establishing the law.

REPEAL PROVISIONS.

SEC. -. The foregoing seventy-three titles embrace the statutes of the United States, general and permanent in their nature, in force on the 1st day of December, 1873, as revised and consolidated by commissioners appointed under an act of Congress, and the same shall be designated and cited as The Revised Statutes of the United States.

SEC.. All acts of Congress passed prior to said 1st day of December, 1873, any portion of which is embraced in any section of said revision, are hereby

repealed, and the section applicable thereto shall be in force in lieu thereof; all parts of such acts not contained in such revision having been repealed or superseded by subsequent acts, or not being general and permanent in their nature: Provided, That the incorporation into said revision of any general and permanent provision taken from an act making appropriations, or from an act containing other provisions of a private, local, or temporary character, shall not repeal or in any way affect any appropriation or any provision of a private, local, or temporary character contained in any of said acts, but the same shall remain in force; and all acts of Congress passed prior to said last-named day, no part of which are embraced in said revision, shall not be affected or changed by its enactment.

SEC. The repeal of the several acts embraced in said revision shall not affect any act done, or any right accruing or accrued, or any suit or proceeding had or commenced in any civil cause before the said repeal; but all rights and liabilities under said acts shall continue, and may be enforced in the same manner as if said repeal had not been made: nor shall said repeal in any manner affect the right to any office, or change the term or terms thereof.

SEC. -. All offenses committed and all penalties or forfeitures incurred under any statute embraced in said revision prior to said repeal may be prosecuted and punished in the same manner and with the same effect as if said repeal had not been made.

SEC. All acts of limitation, whether applicable to civil causes and proceedings or to the prosecution of offenses, or for the recovery of penalties or forfeitures, embraced in said revision and covered by said repeal, shall not be affected thereby; but all suits, proceedings, or prosecutions, whether civil or criminal, for causes arising or acts done or committed prior to said repeal, may be committed and prosecuted within the same time as if said repeal had not been made.

SEC. The arrangement and classification of the several sections of the revision have been made for the purpose of a more convenient and orderly arrangement of the same, and therefore no inference or presumption of a legisative construction is to be drawn by reason of the title under which any particular section is placed.

SEC. The enactment of the said revision is not to affect or repeal any act of Congress passed since the 1st day of December, 1873, and all acts passed since that date are to have full effect as if passed after the enactment of this revision, and so far as such acts vary from or conflict with any provision contained in said revision, they are to have effect as subsequent statutes, and as repealing any portion of the revision inconsistent therewith.

In reviewing the work of this revision or codification, it is impossible not to accord it a rank quite distinct from, if not higher than any previous work of the kind known to history. It deals exclusively with national powers, with the duties of citizens to the national authority and their rights under that authority, and with all the ex

ternal relations of the State, or of its people, to foreign states and to foreign peoples. The Code Napoleon is, or was, essentially a body of such laws as we define to be State and municipal laws. The preservation of civil order, the protection of property and the punishment of crimes against these, we have relegated entirely to State law and to municipal authority. It is only where the larger interests of the people of the whole country are involved, that we invoke the power of the United States. And so few are the infractions of general or national law that many, if not most, of our citizens have never seen the posse of a United States Marshal, nor have entered the doors of a United States Court. Yet the laws and the rules of their administration by the general government should be much more generally known and studied than they are. Their recent enlargement and more vigorous administration have merely developed the nation itself, have shown us what it is, and what it must be in any emergency affecting its existence, or even security. In the matter of revenues and expenditures alone, the growth of its duties of administration from the scale of eighty millions yearly for the sum of both, to six hundred millions yearly for the like sum, is the work of a very few years scarcely twenty-five.2 If our present necessities in this respect are more a measure of our misfortunes than of our advancement as compared with 1850 to 1854, we are still called upon to exert a degree of national strength in carrying burdens which is enormously greater than was then shown.

In fact, the nation is developed as no nationality of the Old World is; its executive and administrative energies and capacities have been tried under circumstances more difficult than have been known in any previous case, and they have, without material exception or defect, fully met the demand upon them. The people of this country have undoubtedly made a vast advance upon the standard of twenty-five years since; the national effectiveness, if it may be so de scribed, is as largely in advance of that era, as are the necessities which the present condition of affairs imposes on us; and this advance scarcely raises any suggestion or elicits any feeling on what was once an important political question, namely, the possible danger from the exercise of greater powers by the general govern

* In 1850 the revenues were $44,604,718; the expenditures, $47,669,766. In 1875 the revenues were $288,000,051, and the expenditures $294,029,329.