construction as shall suppress the mischief and advance the remedy, and to suppress subtle inventions and evasions for the continuance of the mischief and pro privato commodo, and to add force and life to the cure and remedy according to the true intent of the makers of the Act pro bono publico." These rules are still in full force and effect, with the addition that regard must now be had, not only to the common law, but also to prior legislation and to the judicial interpretation thereof. A good illustration of the way in which these rules are put in practice is to be found in the case of Salkeld v. Johnson (1848), 2 Ex. 256, 272. In that case the question was whether, under the statute of 2 & 3 Will. 4, c. 100, a valid and indefeasible claim of exemption from payment of tithes can be sustained for lands which have never paid tithes for sixty years. "This question depends," said the Court, " upon the construction of this Act, which unfortunately has been so penned as to give rise to a remarkable difference of opinion among the judges. . . . . We propose to construe the Act, according to the legal rules for the interpretation of statutes, principally by the words of the statute itself, which we are to read in their ordinary sense, and only to modify or alter so far as it may be necessary to avoid some manifest absurdity or incongruity, but no further. It is proper also to consider (1) the state of the law which it proposes or purports to alter; (2) the mischief which existed, and which it was intended to remedy; and (3) the nature of the remedy provided, and then to look at the statutes in pari materia as a means of explaining this statute. These are the proper modes of ascertaining the intention of the Legislature." .... Lord Blackburn, in Young v. Leamington (1883), 8 App. Cas. at p. 526, said the Courts "ought in general, in construing an Act of Parliament, to assume that the Legislature knows the existing state of the law." The assumption may be taken as correct with reference to the knowledge of the draftsman of Government Bills, and perhaps his knowledge may be imputed to Parliament. From this assumption springs the practice H Said not to apply to penal statutes. Exposition ex visceribus actus. of the Courts to examine the pre-existing law in order to clear up any doubt as to the meaning of an Act. Such an examination was instituted by Lord Blackburn, in the case last cited, to assist him to the conclusion that s. 174 of the Public Health Act, 1875, was intended to get rid of the doubts raised by judicial decisions whether certain corporations could contract otherwise than under their common seal. This was the regular practice of that very learned judge in all cases in which any doubt arose in his mind, whether they arose upon the construction of an English (i) or a colonial (k) statute, and is generally recognised as a proper method of ascertaining the true meaning of an enactment. Thus, in Yorkshire Insurance Co. v. Clayton (1881), 8 Q. B. D. 421, deciding the meaning of 41 Vict. c. 15, s. 13 (inhabited house duty), Brett, L.J., laid the rule down thus (p. 426): " It might have been difficult to have come to this conclusion if one had not known the state of the law as to taxation of houses at the time this statute was enacted, but it is a well-known rule or canon of construction that, in construing an Act of Parliament, one ought to take into account the state of the law and of judicial decisions at the time the Act is passed." Pollock, C.B., in Att.-Gen. v. Sillem (1863), 2 H. & C. 509, observed, that although the rules laid down in Heydon's case are said to apply to all statutes alike, including penal statutes, the penal statutes there alluded to are statutes which create some disability or forfeiture. "I think," he added, "it is altogether a mistake to apply the resolutions in Heydon's case to a criminal statute which creates a new offence." Statutes creating crimes, as we shall see presently,() are to be construed by somewhat different rules from those which regulate the mode of construing statutes in general. 3. But besides the rules which were laid down in Heydon's case for the exposition of obscurely penned statutes, there is a general rule of construction which is applicable to all (i) Bradlaugh v. Clarke (1883), 6 App. Cas. pp. 373-75. statutes alike, and which is usually spoken of as a construction ex visceribus actus (m)-within the four corners of the Act. "The office of a good expositor of an Act of Parliament," said Lord Coke in Lincoln College case (1595), 3 Rep. 59 b, "is to make construction on all the parts together, and not of one part only by itself—Nemo enim aliquam partem recte intelligere potest antequam totum iterum atque iterum perlegerit." And again, in 1 Inst. 381 b, he says: "It is the most natural and genuine exposition of a statute to construe one part of a statute by another part of the same statute, for that best expresseth the meaning of the makers . . . . and this exposition is exc visceribus actus." But this rule of construction is never allowed to alter the meaning of what is of itself clear and explicit; (n) it is only when, as the Court said in Palmer's case (1784), 1 Leach C. C. 355 (4th ed.), "any part of an Act of Parliament is penned obscurely and when other passages can elucidate that obscurity, that recourse ought to be had to such context for that purpose;" for, as the judges. said in the House of Lords, in Warburton v. Loveland (1831), 2 D. & Cl. 500,"no rule of construction can require that when the words of one part of a statute convey a clear meaning, it shall be necessary to introduce another part of a statute for the purpose of controlling or diminishing the efficacy of the first part." "It is not the duty of a court of law," said Selwyn, L.J., in Smith's case (1869), (m) Sir R. Palmer, in a speech on the Collier appointment (Feb. 1872), well expounded the meaning of "construction ex visceribus actús." He then said as follows: "Nothing is better settled than that a statute is to be expounded, not according to the letter, but according to the meaning and spirit of it. What is within the true meaning and spirit of the statute is as much law as what is within the very letter of it, and that which is not within the meaning and spirit, though it seems to be within the letter, is not the law, and is not the statute. That effect should be given to the object, spirit, and meaning of a statute, is a rule of legal construction, but the object, spirit, and meaning must be collected from the words used in the statute. It must be such an intention as the Legislature has used fit words express. See 209 Hansard (3rd series), p. 685. to 64 (n) In Bentley v. Rotherham (1876), Ch. D. 592, Jessel, M.R., put it in this way: There is no doubt a rule, applicable to Acts of Parliament as well as to other legal instruments, that you may control the plainest words by reference to the context. But then, as has been said very often, you must have a context even more plain, or at least as plain as the words to be controlled." 4 Ch. App. 614, "to be astute to find out ways in which the object of an Act of the Legislature may be defeated." This rule of construction has frequently been recognised and acted upon by courts of law from Lord Coke's time down to the present day. In Brett v. Brett (1826), 3 Addams 210, Sir John Nicholl says as follows: "The key to the opening of every law is the reason and spirit of the law; it is the animus imponentis, the intention of the law maker expressed in the law itself, taken as a whole. Hence, to arrive at the true meaning of any particular phrase in a statute, the particular phrase is not to be viewed detached from its context in the statute; it is to be viewed in connection with its whole context, meaning by this as well the title and preamble as the purview or enacting part of the statute." In Bywater v. Brandling (1828), 7 B. & C. 643, at p. 660, Lord Tenterden said: "In construing Acts of Parliament we are to look not only at the language of the preamble or of any particular clause, but at the language of the whole Act. And if we find in the preamble or in any particular clause an expression not so large and extensive in its import as those used in other parts of the Act, and upon a view of the whole Act we can collect from the more large and extensive expressions used in other parts the real intention of the Legislature, it is our duty to give effect to the larger expressions, notwithstanding the phrases of less extensive import in the preamble or in any particular clause." In R. v. Mallo (1859), 12 Ir. C. L. R. 35, the question was whether the Common Lodging House Acts of 1851 and 1853 applied to Ireland. "Prima facie," said Lefroy, C.J., "since the Union every Act applies to Ireland, but according to Lord Coke the construction of a statute is best made ex visceribus actûs, and, on looking carefully through the details of these Acts, I think abundant proof will be found of their inapplicability to Ireland." In Ex parte St. Sepulchre's (1864), 33 L. J. Ch. 375, Lord Westbury said: "The Vice-Chancellor has taken these words apart from the context. . . . . He is of opinion that what he denominates the abstract justice of the case requires this interpretation. I cannot concur in that reasoning. I cannot admit the principle that in a matter of positive law abstract justice requires or justifies any departure from the established. rules of interpretation. In Rein v. Lane (1867), L. R. 2 Q. B. 151, Blackburn, J., said: "It is, I apprehend, in accordance with the general rule of construction that you are not only to look at the words, but you are to look at the context, the collocation,(o) and the object of such words relating to such matter, and interpret the meaning according to what would appear to be the meaning intended to be conveyed by the use of the words under the circumstances."(p) "It is beyond dispute, too, that we are entitled, and indeed bound, when construing the terms of any provision found in a statute, to consider any other parts of the Act which throw light on the intention of the Legislature, and which may serve to show that the particular provision ought not to be construed as it would be alone and apart from the rest of the Act" (Lord Herschell in Colquhoun v. Brooks (1889), 14 App. Cas. at p. 506). "It certainly is not a satisfactory method of arriving at the meaning of a compound phrase to sever it into several parts, and to construe it by the separate meaning of each of such parts when severed. Many examples will occur to the mind where such a process would lead to absurdity." (Halsbury, C., in Mersey Docks Board v. Henderson (1888), 13 App. Cas. 595, at p. 599.) It follows from the rule thus variously stated that all] statutory definitions or abreviations must be read subject to the qualification, variously expressed in the definition clauses which create them (1) "unless the context otherwise requires;' (0) In R. v. Ramsgate (1827), 6 B. & C. 712, at p. 717, Holroyd, J., said that certain words "must be construed, according to their nature and import, in the order in which they stand in the Act of Parliament." (p) Hence the rule laid down by Lord Coke (2 Inst. 386), "that a case, out of the mischief intended to be remedied by a statute shall be construed to be out of the purview, though it be within the words." Quoted and acted upon by Abbott, C.J., in Doe v. Bartle (1822), 5 B. & Ald. 492, at p. 501. |