LIBRARY OF THE a.36862 MEMORANDA. The legislation of Congress may be found on pages 312, 713, authorizing this publication and making it prima facie evidence of the laws therein contained in all the courts of the United States, and of the several States and Territories, as printed copies of the Revised Statutes and of the Statutes-at-Large are made by the acts printed on pages 22, 134, 153. By the acts of 1878 and 1880 (pp. 205, 312) the Secretary of State is required to keep copies for sale at the cost of the paper, press work, and binding, with ten per cent added thereto, II PREFACE. This publication is neither a revision nor a consolidation of the statutes. It is a reproduction of the laws enacted since the passage of the Revised Statutes which are neither obsolete, local, temporary and expired, special, superseded, nor repealed, arranged in chronological and numerical order as engrossed on the rolls in the State Department, with copious notes and cross references. It is the result of a system of references begun by me, for my private use, soon after the passage of the Revised Statutes in 1874 and continued to the present time. When the Fiftieth Congress expired in March, 1889, the manuscript of the legislation up to that date was substantially ready for the press, and my task would have been much lighter had the work closed at that time; but the act authorizing the publication required the legislation of the Fifty-first Congress to be included. That Congress was prolific in legislation, altering, superseding, or repealing many acts of every one of the previous eight Congresses, and adding about two hundred and fifty pages, or more than one-fourth, to the body of the work. This made it necessary to revise and rearrange all my previously prepared manuscript, and it was physically impossible alone to do so much within the time contemplated when the act authorizing the publication was passed, and have the work ready at the assembling of the Fifty-second Congress in the December following. I was fortunate, however, early in March last, to secure the valuable assistance of George A. King, esq., and William B. King, esq., both of the city of Washington and members of the bars of the Supreme Court of the United States and the District of Columbia. To their industry, care, and judgment I am much indebted for whatever degree of merit the work has attained. At the outset the problem, prescribed in the act authorizing the publication, of putting the whole into one volume confronted me. This has been accomplished by restricting the matter to such acts and sections as are supplementary to the provisions contained in the Revised Statutes and such as would be properly included in a new revision if one were to be made, with some others so nearly allied that they could not well be omitted. In this particular the Revised Statutes of the United States for the District of Columbia, passed at the same time, have been regarded as within the meaning of the act, and therefore many local acts relating to the District are included, as in the former superseded volume, which otherwise would have been omitted. Any other course would have swollen the work to several thousand pages, and rendered it altogether too large for one volume. But nothing has been omitted without a good reason. A new feature has been introduced of referring in the margin where acts are noted to both the previous and the subsequent pages of the volume. This has been done not without considerable difficulty, and it is hoped that it will add greatly to the convenience of the work. At the beginning is a table of sections of the Revised Statutes, repealed, superseded, or connected with subsequent legislation, with references to the pages of this volume where the new provisions may be found. Copious notes have been added to many of the acts, specially mentioning all legislation on the same subject with explanations. These notes, the numerous cross references, and the table of altered sections of the Revised Statutes, supplement the index and render it easy to find all the statute law on any given subject. WILLIAM A. RICHARDSON. NOVEMBER 2, 1891. |