US .:.65 HARVARD COLLEGE JULY 8, 1941 LIBRARY From the Estate of Published by Authority of a Resolution of the General Assembly, passed January Session, 1857. ADVERTISEMENT. By authority of resolutions of the general assembly, His Excellency, Governor Hoppin, appointed Samuel Ames, Thomas A. Jenckes, Wingate Hayes, Benjamin T. Eames, and Henry Howard, commissioners "to revise the public laws of the State, to consolidate all those statutes which relate to the same subject, to digest the same under proper titles, chapters, and sections, and to report the same to the general assembly, with such proposed improvements, alterations,' and additions as they might deem proper." Under this appointment, the commissioners, at the January session A. D. 1857, reported the public laws of the state as directed, which, after having been amended and enacted by the general assembly at the same session, were ordered to be published by a committee consisting of the commissioners, and the Hon. John R. Bartlett, secretary of state, "with a full and minute index to be made to said statutes, a suitable table of contents to accompany the same, and also proper notes to each chapter, of the contents of the several sections thereof." The completed digest is now placed before the public, with the hope, that any slight errors in it, will find an apology in the extreme rapidity with which it was necessarily passed through the press, in order to meet the necessity consequent upon its taking effect on the first day of July, a. D. 1857. For the committee, SAMUEL AMES, Chairman. June, 1857. ANALYTICAL TABLE OF CONTENTS. Of former debts, supremacy of the constitution and laws of |