The Review of American Colonial Legislation By the King in Council
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III The Procedure Of The Government In Legislative Review (continued) By means of instructions limiting the discretion of governors in giving assent to proposed legislation, ir the government exercised a considerable restraint upon the law-making power of the legislatures in the royal colonies. At the close of the seventeenth century it had already imposed general rules regarding the form of enactments and the manner of their transmission. It was insisted that enacting clauses should read " by the Governor, Council and Assembly," and that each separate act should deal with but one subject, and contain no clause foreign to its title.1 Unless passed for a temporary end, acts must be of indefinite duration; while laws for levying money were not to continue for less than one year. Governors were not to
...re-enact any law except upon very urgent occasions, and in no case more than once without his majesty's express consent. Acts altering, confirming or suspending other acts must indicate by title and date of passage the precise laws effected.3 Governors were instructed to transmit laws within three months from the time of their enactment and to send duplicates by the next conveyance, upon pain offorfeiting one year's salary.1 Each act was to bear in wax a separate imprint of the provincial seal. It was to be carefully abstracted in the margins, and to bear the dates of its passage by the governor, council and assembly. The governor was to be " as particular as may be " in his observations upon every act; " whether . . introduc- tive of a new Law, declaratory of a former Law, or whether [it] does repeal a Law then before in being; . . and to send . . the reasons for the passing of such law, unless the same do fully appear in the preamble." Copies of the official journals...
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