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at this session of the Legislature four bills, namely, the Prison Law, the Education Law, the Judiciary Law and the Justices' Code. The first two bills are included in the original scheme of Statutory Revision. The last two are a part of the scheme of Code Revision. All except the Justices' Code were submitted to the Legislature of 1898. They received considerable attention in committee and the Judiciary Law was passed by the Senate.

The Commisison has also, during the year, prepared the tables of the general and local laws amended or repealed in 1898, which appear at the end of the session laws of that year. A similar table was prepared by this Commission in 1895, and has been continued since. Its value is apparent to every one who has occasion to trace the history of a statute.

The Commission also prepared a schedule of city laws, including a reference to each charter and subsequent amendatory or supplemental statutes. It was thought that this would be found useful by the Legislature and by city officers, by lawyers and others interested in city affairs, and also by this Commission in preparing and examining bills. Copies of this schedule were distributed to the cities early in the fall of 1898. It has already been submitted to this Legislature as a special report, and is. also included herein.

For the purpose of furnishing information as to the contents of the proposed chapters, and also for the purpose of obtaining suggestions, the Commission printed in pamphlet form and distributed during the summer and fall of 1898 about 500 copies of the Prison Law, 1,200 copies of the Education Law, 2,000 copies of the Justices' Code and about 2,700 copies of the Judiciary Law.

The Commission has also prepared a list of the general laws not yet included in any revision. This list includes about 600 statutes. Possibly additional revision bills may be prepared from this list, or, if not, probably many of these statutes can be distributed among the general laws already adopted. Many of them, however, probably cannot be classified.

As a part of the plan of Code Revision, the Commission intends to prepare a chapter of the practice relating to decedents' estates, to be called the "Surrogates' Code." This chapter is nearly completed, and the Commission intends to submit it at the next session of the Legislature. Some work has also been done on the part of the code relating to procedure in other courts of record.

Section 23 of the Legislative Law, as added by chapter 24 of the Laws of 1893, requires the Commission to prepare bills for members of the Legislature or any committee. The Commission has prepared during the present session (1899) about 500 bills at the request of members of the Legislature; besides it has examined and rewritten and copied a large number which were originally prepared elsewhere. In addition to this work the Commission, by custom, reads and compares bills received by the Governor before action thereon by him. This involves a large amount of labor by the Commission, and with the other work of preparing bills, takes so much of its time that it is impracticable to do any revision work during the legislative period, which includes the actual session and thirty days after adjournment.

The revision of the general laws is substantially complete except as to the codes. The Prison Law and the Education Law are the last of the larger revision bills included in the Commis

sion's scheme of revision. These bills are now before the Legislature, and the Commission hopes to be able to submit the remainder of the code revision to the Legislature at its next session.

Respectfully submitted.

CHARLES Z. LINCOLN,

A. JUDD NORTHRUP,

WM. H. JOHNSON,

Commissioners of Statutory and Code Revision.

THE PRISON LAW.

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