rule that, in the construction of a statute, effect is to be given, if possible, to every clause and section of it; and it is the duty of courts, as far as practicable, so to reconcile the different provisions as to make the whole act consistent and harmonious. If this becomes impossible, then we are to give effect to what was manifestly the intention of the Legislature, though by so doing we may restrict the meaning or application of general words.* We have already had occasion to notice the rule which allows reference to the preamble, and even the title, of the act.† "If," says Lord C. J. Tindal, "any doubt arise from the language employed by the Legislature, it has always been held as a safe means of collecting the intention, to call in aid the ground and cause of making the statute, and to have recourse to the preamble, which, according to Chief Justice Dyer, is a key to open the minds of the makers of the act, and the mischiefs which they intended to redress." And so, where the preamble of an act passed on the petition of the corporation of the city of New York, recited the petition of the corporation on which it was passed, it was held that the preamble contain Attorney-General ex rel. McKay v. Detroit & Erin Plank Road Co., 2 Michigan, 138. Ante, pp. 38-40, 42, et seq. tive, they will be taken according to their popular sense; thus, of a limitation of "actions of debt," the common-law action of debt not being known in the practice of the State (Robinson v. Varrell, 16 Tex. 382); and the terms "set-off" and " counter-claim" both being used in a statute, it must be presumed that both were necessary, and that different things were intended by them. Lovejoy v. Robinson, 8 Ind. 399. The same general rule is to be applied to a sentence, and some meaning, if possible, must be given to every word in it (People v. Burns, 5 Mich. 114); and where a given construction would make a word redundant, that is some reason for its rejection. Dearborn v. Brookline, 97 Mass. 466. The same rule applies as to every word of the enacting clause (Parkinson v. State, 14 Md. 184); and none are to be treated as surplusage or as repetition. Gates v. Sallmon, 35 Cal. 576. The whole statute must be made to harmonize, if possible, all the parts with each other and with the general scope. Ellison v. Mobile, &c. R. R., 36 Miss. 572. Where an act directs specific things to be done, and then contains a general prohibitory clause broad enough to cover such things, they will be treated as excepted from the prohibition. De Winton v. Mayor of Brecon, 26 Beav. 533. But where certain words make a statute meaningless, which is intelligible by omitting them, they may be treated as surplusage, even in a criminal statute. U. S. v. Stern, 5 Blatch. C. C. ing the petition might be referred to, to ascertain the intention of the Legislature.* We come next to the means to be employed outside of the statute. It is clear that the judges are to inform themselves of the previous state of the law, and of the mischiefs which the statute to be construed was passed to obviate. And the principle has been frequently acted on. The following case presents a strong instance of the application of Lord Coke's rule, that in construing a statute, the antecedent legislation is to be kept in view. A junior creditor applied to redeem lands sold under execution, the statute declaring that when this is done, the creditor applying to redeem shall present to the sheriff a copy of the docket of the judgment under which he claims. This formality was omitted; and it was insisted that the statute was merely directory, and ought to be dispensed with. But it was decided otherwise; and in so doing reliance was placed on the previous legislation, and this language was held: "The act of 1826 did not prescribe the evidence to be produced by a creditor claiming the right to redeem. The consequence was, that this matter was left, in a great degree, to the discretion of the sheriff and his deputies. Different officers were at liberty to adopt different rules of proceeding; and the same officer might sometimes receive, and at other times reject, the same kind of evidence. Besides leaving the parties in doubt and uncertainty about their legal rights, a wide door was left open for favoritism and injustice. To remedy these evils, the Legislature, in 1830, specially prescribed the evidence which should be presented by the creditor; and thus made the rights of the parties depend, not on the discretion of the officer, but on the law of the land. That this was a salutary provision can hardly be doubted; but if it were otherwise, the remedy be longs to another branch of the Government." And the bill filed to redeem was dismissed. But when it is said that the judges are to take into consideration the previous state of the law, and the mischiefs which the enactment was intended to prevent, a doubt at once sug * Furman v. The City of New York, 5 Sand. 16. Waller v. Harris, 20 Wend. 555. gests itself as to the mode to be pursued and the evidence to be required. The judges may be supposed to have, and may perhaps be reasonably charged with, a knowledge of the existing state of the law at any given time; but how are they to know the exact mischiefs which the legislator had in view? They cannot be presumed to have any official knowledge of the general state of the community, or of every local disturbance or local want. What means are they, then, to employ?—what evidence to consult? All this is left very much in the dark by Lord Coke and his successors. We are not to suppose that the courts will receive evidence of extrinsic facts as to the intention of the Legislature; that is, of facts which have taken place at the time of, or prior to, the passage of the bill. So in Pennsylvania, in regard to the construction of a bank charter, where it was contended that the bank was exempt from taxation, it was held that the evidence of public embarrassment, the proclama tion and message of the governor, the journals of the House of Representatives, and the reports of committees, should be wholly disregarded.* "The journals are not evidence," say the same court, in a still more recent case, "of the meaning of a statute; because this must be ascertained from the language of the act itself, and the facts connected with the subject on which it is to operate."+ On the other hand, there is no doubt that very eminent judges have, in the construction of statutes, been wont to permit their minds to be influenced, and in fact to take a sort of judicial cognizance of many extrinsic facts, in regard to which evidence certainly would not have been permitted, and which, indeed, could not perhaps be proved. (a) * Bank of Pennsylvania v. Commonwealth, 7 Penn. State R. 144. The Southwark Bank v. The Commonwealth, 26 Penn. State R. 446. But it is also ruled in this last case, that the journals are the highest evidence of the fact of the enactment of a law, or of any other fact connected with its passage. (a) The intent is the object of construction, but it is first to be sought in the words of the statute, Virginia, &c. R. R. v. Lyon Co. Comm'rs, 6 Nev. 68; it is to be sought, but not at the expense of the clear meaning of the words, Leoni v. Taylor, 20 Mich. 148. Statutes are to be construed with reference to the object to be accomplished by them; thus where the object of an act was the disposal of the water-lot property of a city, and in the description of such property, the side of a street, which in fact extended along only a part of the water lot, was referred to as The English statute, 26 Geo. II, c. 23, declared all marriages of children under age void, unless the consent of the parents or guardians was first obtained. The question was brought before the King's Bench, whether the act was to be interpreted to include illegitimate children; and Lord Mansfield, in holding that it did so, put his decision on the ground of the mischiefs which the act was intended to obviate: "This act was passed in order to prevent the illegal practice of clandestine marriages, which were become so very enormous, that places were set a boundary of the lot, such reference was held not to extend the street itself in length. People v. Dana, 22 Cal. 11. As another example of this general doctrine, an act requiring the consent of "residents" to the bonding of a town, was held not to include a canal corporation whose canal extended through the town. People v. Schoonmaker, 63 Barb. 44. It may well be doubted, however, whether the principle was properly applied in this case. As the general theory of the statute was to get the consent of a majority, in number and in respect to property, of "resident" taxpayers, so that those who would pay the debt should be heard in its creation, and as the canal corporation was by far the largest taxpayer of the town, and as corporations are constantly treated as residents," for the purposes of taxation, it would seem that the principle invoked by the court should have led it to exactly the opposite construction. 66 A statute is to be construed with reference to the circumstances at the time and the necessity of enacting it; thus an act as to service of process in civil actions, was held not to require any filing of the complaint as a first step, because of the delay and expense of travel that would thus be caused to suitors. Keith v. Quinney, 1 Oregon, 364. Supposed policy of the Government as to the particular subject is, however, entitled to but little weight. Hadden v. Collector, 5 Wall. 107. Intent is to prevail even over legislative construction, when such construction obviously results from misapprehension. Turney v. Wilton, 36 Ill. 385; and words may be treated as surplusage when necessary to carry out the intent. U. S. v. Stern, 5 . Blatch. C. C. 512. Where a particular construction, and even the most obvious one, would lead to an unreasonable result-e. g., would give to the losing party in replevin the right to the possession of the chattels—a different construction will be given, if possible, without doing too much violence to the letter. Haentze v. Howe, 28 Wisc. 293. That where the intent is doubtful, equity will construe as is most convenient and equitable, see Jersey Co. v. Davison, 5 Dutch. 415. If a statute expresses first a general intent, and afterwards an inconsistent particular intent, the latter will be taken as an exception from the former, and both will stand. Stockett v. Bird, 18 Md. 484, where this rule was applied to an act which vested the personal property of a wife dying intestate absolutely in the husband, and which in a subsequent portion made a different disposition of choses in action not reduced to possession. The intent or opinion of individual legislators, as shown in the discussions upon the bill, are entitled to little weight, if any. Leese v. Clark, 12 Cal. 387, 425; Taylor v. Taylor, 10 Minn. 107. But the general state of opinion, public, judicial, and legislative, at the time of the enactment, may be considered. Keyport St. Co. v. Farmers' Trans. Co. 3 C. E. Green, 13; Delaplane v. Crenshaw, 15 Gratt. 457. apart in the Fleet and other prisons for the purpose of celebrating clandestine marriages. The Court of Chancery, on the ground of its illegality, made it a contempt of the court to marry one of its wards in this manner. They committed the offenders to prison; but that mode of punishment was found ridiculous and ineffectual. Then this act was introduced to remedy the mischief.” * It may very well be that, in the condition of English juris-7 prudence in former times, when laws were few and rarely passed, when the business of legislation was confined to a small and select class, to which practically the judiciary belonged, when the legislative and the judicial bodies sat in the same place, and, indeed, in the same building,-in such a state of things, it may well be that the judiciary might suppose themselves to possess, that they might indeed really possess, a considerable personal knowledge of the legislative intent, and that they might come almost to consider themselves as a co-ordinate body with the Legislature. But in modern societies, where the division of political attributes is so much more nice and rigorous, where the business of legislation has become multifarious and enormous, and especially in this country where the judiciary is so completely separated from the Legislature, it must be untrue in fact that they can have any personal knowledge sufficient really to instruct them as to the legislative intention; and if untrue in fact, any general theory or loose idea of this kind must be dangerous in practice. I believe that, subject to the rules hereafter declared, and subject to the exceptions of equitable construction, to be discussed in the next chapter, the tendency of all our modern decisions is to the effect, that the intention of the Legislature is to be found in the statute itself, and that there only the judges are to look for the mischiefs meant to be obviated, and the remedy meant to be provided. In a case on the embargo laws, the Supreme Court of the United States said, "In construing these laws, it has been truly stated to be the duty of the court to effect the intention of the Legislature; but this intention is to be searched for in * The King v. Inhabitants of Hodnett, 1 T. R. 96. |