Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446

Few persons, we believe, who have not had occasion to consult these parliamentary volumes in a systematic manner, are at all aware of the immense labour that is bestowed upon them, and the care and completeness with which they are compiled and arranged. Indeed, we daresay few readers have any accurate notions of the actual number of parliamentary papers annually issued, or of the nature of their contents. From even a very cursory examination of the literary result of a parliamentary session, the previously uninformed investigator could not fail to rise with a greatly augmented estimate of the functions of the great ruling body of the state—the guarding and directing power in the multitudinous affairs of the British Empire—an empire that extends over every possible variety of country and climate, and includes under its powerful, yet mild and beneficent sway, tribes of every colour of skin, and of every shade of religious belief. Such a survey, in fact, tends to impress one more fully and immediately than could well be fancied, with the magnitude of the business of the British legislature, and the consequent weighty responsibilities imposed upon its members. But, great as the burden is, it is distributed over so many shoulders, that it appears to press heavily, and really does so, only on a few who support it at the more trying points.

The session 1851 is the latest of whose labours, as they appear in the form of parliamentary records, an account can be given. By the admirable system of arrangement we have referred to, each parliamentary 'paper,' whether it issues in the shape of a bulky Blue-book—that is to say, as a thick, stitched folio volume, in a dark-blue cover—or as a mere 'paper'—an uncovered folio of a single sheet of two or four pages, or several stitched together, but not attaining the dignity of the blue cover—is marked as belonging to a certain class; and when the issue of the session is complete, a full set of 'Titles, Contents, and Indexes' to the whole is supplied, so that they can all be classified and bound up in due order with the utmost ease and celerity. The Titles, Contents, and Indexes to the Sessional Printed Papers of Session 1851 are at present before us, in the shape of a folio Blue-book about an inch and a half thick, from which we think we may pick some facts of interest.

It must be premised, that the session 1851 was considered by politicians a peculiarly barren and unfruitful one, as the Great Exhibition, in conjunction with ministerial difficulties, and the monster debates on the Ecclesiastical Titles' Bill, tended greatly to impede the ordinary business of the Houses, and gave an air of tedium and languor to the whole proceedings. Nevertheless, the papers for the year amount to no less than sixty volumes! Of these, the first six contain Public Bills. A bill, as most of our readers must be aware, is a measure submitted to the consideration of parliament with the view of its being adopted into the legal code of the country, for which it must receive the sanction of both Houses and the assent of the crown. When a bill has 'passed' through the Lords and Commons, and received the royal assent, it becomes an 'act'—that is, a law. A bill, in passing through the Houses, is subjected to numerous amendments and alterations in form, and is often printed, for the use of members and other parties interested, three or four times after such alterations, before it comes forth in its final and permanent form as an act. Thus, the famous Ecclesiastical Titles' Bill is to be found in three several shapes among the bills before it reappears for the fourth time as an act. Again, the word 'public' prefixed to these six volumes of bills, reminds us of the vast amount of business that comes before parliament and its committees in the shape of 'private' bills, of which no record appears here. These are bills of special and individual application, such as when a public company seeks an act of incorporation, the possessor of an entailed estate desires to sell a portion of ground, a railway directory asks for powers of various kinds, and so on.

An examination of the contents of these six volumes would shew how many and diverse are the subjects that turn up in parliament in the course of a single and brief session; but to enter on it satisfactorily would require a great amount of space, and might, after all, be more tedious than profitable. A glance at those actually passed may suffice. These were 106 in number: the first is, 'An Act to amend the Passengers' Act of 1849;' and the hundred and sixth, 'An Act to appoint Commissioners to inquire into the Existence of Bribery in St Albans.' Besides the acts of an ordinary or routine character, we find the following among the subjects legislated on:—The Marine Forces, Leases for Mills in Ireland, Protection of Original Designs, the Protection of Servants and Apprentices, the Sale of Arsenic, Highways in Wales, Sites for Schools, Herring-Fishery, Prisons in Scotland, Common Lodging-Houses, Window and House Duties, Marriages in India, Ecclesiastical Titles, Smithfield Market, Settlement of the Boundaries of Canada and New Brunswick, Highland Roads and Bridges, Gunpowder Magazine at Liverpool, Management of the Insane in India, Lands in New Zealand, Representative Peers of Scotland, Emigration, Law of Evidence, Criminal Justice, &c.