newspaper in each state; but if this should prove to be insufficient, it might be made in three newspapers in a state. The Acts of March 27, 1804,1 and December 23, 1817, made provision for publication by newspapers in the territories. The Act of May 11, 1820,3 continued the newspaper publication, but provided that a treaty should be published in one newspaper "within the limits of the State or Territory to which the subject matter of such treaty shall belong." Evidently this was meant to apply especially to Indian treaties. The Act of July 23, 1866, appropriated $15,000 for printing the laws in newspapers in the insurrectionary states. The Act of June 20, 1874,5 ordered the newspaper publication to cease after March 4, 1875.

How the laws were printed by the newspapers is illustrated by the following letter. It is in printed form except for the signature, date, place, address, and postscript:

Sir,

DEPARTMENT OF STATE,

Washington, December 1, 1817.

You are hereby appointed one of the Printers for publishing the Laws of the United States, which may be enacted during the First Session of the Fifteenth Congress, in Pennsylvania, at Pittsburgh.

A copy of the National Intelligencer, containing acts of that session, will be regularly forwarded to you, and you will

1 2 Stat., 302.

2 3 Stat., 473.

3 3 Stat., 576.

4 14 Stat., 194. 5 18 Stat., 90.

proceed to insert them in your newspaper, as they reach you, without the least delay. You are also requested to forward a copy of each number of your paper, containing the acts as from time to time published, to this Department.

When the publication of the Laws shall have been completed by you, your account, made out and presented at the Department of State, will be paid to you, or to your authorized agent, at this place, at the rate of fifty cents for each printed octavo page, estimating the same according to the Pica page of the old edition of the laws.

I am sir,

Respectfully,

Your obedient servant,

J. Q. ADAMS.

Mr. Charles Shaler,

Printer of the Commonwealth.

P. S. It is expected that you will insert the acts on the first page of your paper, commencing on the left hand column of that page, and by no means are you to divide any one act, unless its great length should fill more than the whole four pages of your newspaper.1

The printed copies of the laws required to be distributed by the Secretary of State were what are known as "the slip laws," being a separate print of each law, whether long or short.

Soon after Congress met, before there was a Department of State, on June 5, 1789,2 a joint resolution provided that within ten days after the passage of a law twenty-two printed copies should be lodged with the President, two copies to be sent by him to each Governor of a State. The slip laws are, therefore, 1 Dept. of State, Miscl. Letters.

2 Annals of Cong., 1st Cong., 420.

the earliest continuous form of publication of the laws but the obligatory distribution was discontinued by Act of January 12, 1895.1 Since then they have been distributed only to such persons as apply for copies. When a certified copy of an act is required, the slip law is compared with the original act and certified to under the seal of the Department. The method by which the slip law is made correct in the first place must be described.

A manuscript law is received at the Department, coming, nearly always, directly from the White House, but occasionally, when it was vetoed and passed over the President's veto, from the President of the Senate or the Speaker of the House. It is registered in the Bureau of Rolls and Library and a printed copy of it, which the Department has already received before it was finally approved, is then compared with it, and sent as the copy to the Government Printing Office. The proof returned is that of the slip law. It is compared with the original law, and the revised proof is again read with the original. Should any errors be detected another revised proof is compared with the original. The comparing with the original continues until the proof is in absolute agreement with the original, when the slip law is finally struck off. Of course, no liberties can be taken with the text of the law itself. If an error was made in it, it must appear in the printed law, the power that passed the law being the only one that can correct it. In preparing the law for printing and promulgation the system followed

1 28 Stat., 609.

by the Department is so painstaking that errors are almost unknown.

The form in which a law which has been approved is printed is as follows:

[PUBLIC-No. 54.]

AN ACT To amend section forty-eight hundred and twentynine of the United States Revised Statutes concerning surgeons, assistant surgeons, and other medical officers of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That section forty-eight hundred and twenty-nine of the Revised Statutes of the United States be amended by the addition of the following words: "Provided, That surgeons, assistant surgeons, and other medical officers of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, and the several Branches thereof, may be appointed from others than those who have been disabled in the military service of the United States." Approved, February 9, 1897.

A law which has become effective without action by the President is printed with the following statement following it:

[Note by the Department of State.-The foregoing act having been presented to the President of the United States for his approval, and not having been returned by him to the house of congress in which it originated within the time prescribed by the Constitution of the United States, has become a law without his approval.]

When a bill becomes a law in spite of the President's veto it is printed with the action of Congress following, thus:

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

January 22, 1897.

The President of the United States having returned to the House of Representatives in which it originated the bill (H. R. 9469) "An act to constitute a new division of the eastern judicial district of Texas, and to provide for the holding of terms of court at Beaumont, Texas, and for the appointment of a clerk for said court," with his objections thereto, the House proceeded in pursuance of the Constitution to reconsider the same; and

Resolved, That the said bill pass, two-thirds of the House of Representatives agreeing to pass the same.

Attest:

A. MCDOWELL, Clerk.

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES,

February 8, 1897.

The Senate having proceeded, in pursuance of the Constitution, to reconsider the bill entitled "An act to constitute a new division of the eastern judicial district of Texas, and to provide for the holding of terms of court at Beaumont, Texas, and for the appointment of a clerk for said court," returned to the House of Representatives by the President of the United States, with his objections, and sent by the House of Representatives to the Senate, with the message of the President returning the bill:

Resolved, That the bill do pass, two-thirds of the Senate agreeing to pass the same.

Attest:

Wм. R. Cox, Secretary.

Formerly the laws were engrossed at the Capitol upon large sheets of parchment; but by concurrent resolution of November 1, 1893,1 it was provided that they should be printed upon parchment. A subsequent 1 28 Stat., Appendix, 5.