When you read parts of the acts online and at the exhibition
you will notice that lawyers and members of parliament often
use a language that is difficult to understand. They use very
long sentences. These sentences often contain technical terms
(for example, hereto, hereunder, aforesaid) that we do not use
in our everyday speech.
Sometimes it is necessary to change an act (or law). This could
be necessary for several reasons. The act may:
- not be fair in some part
- not have worked as well as it should
- not have included everyone and they wanted more people to
benefit
- not have been organised well enough to allow the public
servants to administer it properly.
When they make all these changes it becomes difficult to read
the act and work out what it means. You will have read statements
such as the following in your investigations:
- replace Clause XI of the Principal Act ...
- repeal Clauses 1 to 17 and 36
- at the end of Clause 5, add the words ...
- substitute 'twenty-five' for 'fifty' in Clause 12.
This makes it very difficult and confusing to read some of
the acts and to understand what they are saying. So at regular
intervals they put all the changes together in one act, called
a consolidation act. This makes these acts easier to read. The
Land Act of 1890 was a consolidation act.
