PREFACE.

This compilation of the Special Statutes affecting the City of Boston was made in accordance with a request of the Mayor, and the following orders of the City Council, passed March 12, 1892:

Ordered, That the Corporation Counsel be authorized to make a new compilation of the statutes relating to the City of Boston, and to spend for clerk-hire and indexing a sum not exceeding $400, to be charged to the appropriation for incidentals.

Ordered, That the Superintendent of Printing, under the direction of the Committee on Printing, be authorized to print and have stereotyped the volume of the special statutes relating to the City of Boston, prepared by the Corporation Counsel, the expense thus incurred to be charged to the appropriation for printing.

In its arrangement I have followed substantially the plan adopted by Col. E. P. Nettleton in his compilation published in 1885, the principal changes being the insertion of the charter of 1854 in its chronological order, and the omission of the extracts from the Public Statutes. To save expense the stereotype plates of Col. Nettleton's work have been used, and thus I have been led to retain the first two statutes, which, although never formally repealed, are now obsolete, owing to changes in the building laws and the disappearance of porters as a separate class. I have received valuable assistance in the preparation of this compilation and index from William J. McIntyre, Esq., of the Suffolk bar.

THOMAS M. BABSON.