]
Bentham was at the trouble of counting the words in one sentence of an
Act of Parliament, and found that, beginning with "Whereas" and ending
with the word "repealed," it was precisely the length of an ordinary
three-volume novel. To offer the reader that sentence on the present
occasion would be rather a heavy jest, and as little reasonable as the
revenge offered to a village schoolmaster who, having complained that
the whole of his little treatise on the Differential Calculus was
printed bodily in one of the earlier editions of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica (not so profitable as the later), was told that he was
welcome, in his turn, to incorporate the Encyclopaedia Britannica in the
next edition of his little treatise.

[Footnote 48: A polite correspondent reminds me of the Registration Act,
52 G. III. c. 156, in which the fruit of penalties is divided between
the informer, who gets one half, and certain charitable purposes, to
which the other is devoted, while the only penalty set forth in the Act
is transportation for fourteen years.]

In the supposition, however, that there are few readers who, like Lord
King, can boast of having read the Statutes at large through, I venture
to give a title of an Act--a title only, remember, of one of the bundle
of acts passed in one session--as an instance of the comprehensiveness
of English statute law, and the lively way in which it skips from one
subject to another. It is called--

"An Act to continue several laws for the better regulating of pilots,
for the conducting of ships and vessels from Dover, Deal, and the Isle
of Thanet, up the River Thames and Medway; and for the permitting rum or
spirits of the British sugar plantations to be landed before the duties
of excise are paid thereon; and to continue and amend an Act for
preventing fraud in the admeasurement of coals within the city and
liberties of Westminster, and several parishes near thereunto; and to
continue several laws for preventing exactions of occupiers of locks and
wears upon the River Thames westward; and for ascertaining the rates of
water-carriage upon the said river; and for the better regulation and
government of seamen in the merchant service; and also to amend so much
of an Act made during the reign of King George I. as relates to the
better preservation of salmon in the River Ribble; and to regulate fees
in trials and assizes at nisi prius," &c.

But this gets tiresome, and we are only half way thr