THE LAWS & ACTS OF THE General Aflembly FOR Their Majefties Province OF NEW-YORK, As they were Enacted in divers Seffions, the firft of which began April, the 9th, Annoq; Domini, 1691. At New-Tork, Printed and Sold by William Bredford, Printer to their Majefties, King iVilliam & Queen Mary, 1 694 REDUCED FACSIMILE OF TITLE-PAGE [No. 311] ACTS AND LAWS OF THE COLONY AND STATE OF NEW YORK AND OF THE OTHER ORIGINAL COLONIES AND STATES CONSTITUTING THE COLLECTION MADE BY HON. RUSSELL BENEDICT JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF NEW YORK TO BE SOLD WITHOUT RESERVE OR RESTRICTION BY ORDER OF JUDGE RUSSELL BENEDICT THE SALE TO BE CONDUCTED BY MR. THOMAS E. KIRBY AND HIS ASSISTANTS, OF THE AMERICAN ART ASSOCIATION, MANAGERS NEW YORK CITY The common law of England was styled by Blackstone lex non scripta, being that portion of the law which was based on immemorial usage and universal reception as distinguished from lex scripta, the written or statute law. The only method of proving that the common or unwritten law exists is by showing that it has always been the custom to observe it. Obviously laws which depend for their authority on tradition or which are communicated from former ages to the present solely by word of mouth, never can be entirely definite or stationary; and so we see the truth of the statement that "the present common law of England is as dissimilar from that of Edward III. as is the present state of society." The same principle applies to the history of nations. A large part of that which we call history is made up of hearsay statements, more or less colored by the bias or prejudice of the writer. Hence the historic records of a state or nation find their most permanent as well as their most accurate expression in its statutes or written laws. By reference to the statutes of a nation we are able to trace with exactness the spirit, purposes and ideals which underlie its action as well as to ascertain the state of intelligence, learning and accomplishments of its people. The laws passed by the English Colonies in America are most instructive to us as showing the sources from which much of our present statutory law is derived. A comparison of their development in the several Colonies well repays the student of our institutions. Unfortunately the collections of such material are comparatively few in number and difficult of access to the student of this branch of our history. The Honorable Nicholas Trott, Chief Justice of South Carolina, formed, about 1715, the first collection of American colonial statutory law. He describes the books in his collection in the preface to his work on Ecclesiastical Laws. By comparison with the well known collection made by Mr. Charles R. Hildeburn for Charlemagne Tower and now in the Pennsylvania Historical Society's library in Philadelphia, the first collection seems rather meagre. As time goes on collections of the original issues of works of this character become more and more difficult to form, on account of the relatively small number of copies of any particular book that was issued. For example, the collections of the Sessional issues in all the public libraries taken together do not comprise a complete original run or set of New York Colonial statutes. In forming the collection described in this catalogue, naturally the statute laws of my own state and city, in the colonial and constitutional periods, presented the most attractive field of research; hence the New York section of this collection contains items of greater rarity than will be found in respect of most of the other Colonies, although of the latter there are many scarce items. Brooklyn, N. Y. January 1, 1922 [Signed] RUSSELL BENEDICT |