The Massachusetts Acts and Resolves.
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THE MASSACHUSETTS ACTS AND RESOLVES. By James A. Saxe. THAT a few facts gathered together while aiding in the completing of a set of the Acts and Resolves of Massachu setts will be of interest, to those of my brother lawyers with antiquarian tendencies, I make no doubt. It seems incredible that the political and judicial history of the Commonwealth should have«been so little thought of, that, for over a hundred years, the records were blown out from the State House a leaf for every breeze; that there had been no apparent thought that these leaves made up the his tory of the political and social life of the Province and Commonwealth from its germ through its ever varying forms to the recent past; and that' future generations might rightfully claim a complete record of their past legislation. Yet so it was. Legislature after Legislature had been requested to give the matter their earnest consideration, but with little or no material results until 1865. Until the purchase in that year of the almost perfect collection of a private citizen, Ellis Ames, Esq., of Canton, and the addition thereto in 1866 of the manuscript from the General Court Records by a commission ap pointed by the Legislature in 1865, there had been no complete collection of the early editions of the public Acts of the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The work of this Commission of 1865 is practically complete. Five volumes of about a thousand pages each have been printed, bringing together in the same volume the "Resolves" and the "Acts and Laws" passed in the period 1692 to 1780 and origin ally published separately. There are also two appendix volumes, the second of which has been printed, while the first is now being pre pared, losses by fire having set it back. Thirty years have been nearly consumed in the preparation of this work, one of the orig
inal commission, Abner C. Goodell, still superintending it. It is entitled, " The Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachu setts Bay." The pagination of the Acts and the Re solves in the original copies began anew with every session; the reprint is paged as a new book, throughout. As to enumeration of chapters, the Acts and Laws were accord ing to the sovereign's reign, our ancestors often finding they had recorded in the reign of one king, when " the king is dead, long live the king " had been sung some two or three months before the news reached them. In the reprint the Acts and Laws are numbered for the political year according to the assemblies in which enacted. Under the Charter more than one assembly might sit in one year, but under the Constitution only one. At the end of each Act is the date of its passage and publication. The Re solves are numbered according to the ses sions as in original copies. It is interesting to know that the Laws and Resolves of every session were published in the early 18th century by being read in the market place on some set day. Now, pub lication is by printing and distribution to the towns. By the 104th chapter of the Resolves of 1889, the Secretary of the Commonwealth was empowered to collect and publish in the form of the present " blue books," all the Acts and Resolves of the General Court from the adoption of the Constitution in 1780 to 1806, at which latter time full publication of the Acts and Resolves began to be made. As a result, a first volume appeared in 1890. and two more have since been published, bringing the reprint up to 1785. The pagi nation of the reprint forgets the early paging. The enumeration of the Acts is by the polit
