Repeal
| Published date | 01 April 1939 |
| Author | C. R. Hewitt |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032258X3901200210 |
| Date | 01 April 1939 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Repeal
By
INSPECTOR
C. R.
HEWITT
City of
London
Police
IT
is often supposed that social reforms can be effected by
changes in government and the passing of new statutes.
But a government can confer few benefits upon a people
except by destroying its own laws.
The
history of a nation
may be read not so much in the formation as in the repeal of
its laws; and the traditions which surround the great names of
English history may for the most part be summed up in the
word Repeal.
The
reforms which followed the publication of
Adam Smith's Wealth
of
Nations, the campaigns of Daniel
O'Connor against the Act of Union between Great Britain and
Ireland, and those of Cobden, Bright, and Peel for the removal
of the taxes on corn, are illustrations of the principle that
when civilisation has reached a certain point the happiness ot
mankind can, in normal times, be secured only by a policy of
scrapping laws, not by adding to them.
The
spate of legislation with which we are at present
confronted is, in this view, a disturbing commentary on the
times; yet, seen against the background of history, it is obvious
that much of it is of a transitory importance, in due course to
become eligible for destruction.
The
probability that it will
be allowed to remain on the Statute Book and litter the legal
library long after its purpose has lapsed, barred from use only
by the uncertain common law doctrine as to " implied repeal,"
it is the purpose of this article to criticise.
"
The
law is a sort of hocus-pocus science," wrote Charles
Macklin in 1730, " that smiles in your face while it picks your
pocket; and the glorious uncertainty of it is of more use to
the professors than the justice of
it."
Has it changed much
since
then?
Sir Edward Coke had said a century earlier (in
Book I of the Institutes)
that"
reason is the life of the
law-
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