298 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. legislative, Is in substance administrative or judicial, or partly the one and partly the other. Such is the case in this country with the private Acts of Parliament by which railway and other com- panies are incorporated, and have powers of compulsory purchase and the like conferred on them. So before the establishment of the Divorce Court the dissolution of marriages by a private Act of Parliament was a costly and cumbrous proceeding, but still of a judicial kind. In these and similar cases the form of legislation has been rendered necessary by historical or constitutional acci- dent. Sometimes, again, the purpose of these extraordinary legis- lative acts is to relieve innocent persons, and those who may have to derive titles to property from them, from the consequences of some venial failure to comply with the requirements of law. Mar- riages between British subjects have often been celebrated in good faith, but in fact without authority, by British consuls and other official persons in remote parts of the world, and on the error being discovered Acts of Parliament have been passed to give validity to the marriages so celebrated. Acts of indemnity have much the same nature, so far as they relate to the neglect or omission of requirements which have come to be regarded as merely formal. When the Test Acts were in force there was an annual Act of In- demnity for the relief of those public officers (being in fact the great majority) who had not performed and observed all the condi- tions which at one time had been supposed, and for a time possibly were, needful precautions for securing the Protestant succession to the throne. Lastly, that which in form is an act of legislation may be a more or less thinly disguised act of revolution, civil war, or reprisal against unsuccessful revolution. Acts of Attainder are the best English example in this kind : they must be carefully dis- tinguished from impeachment, which is a regular process known to the law, though an unusual one. All these matters have their own historical and political interest; but we have nothing to learn from them about the normal contents and operation of legal institutions. The Roman name oi privilegia marks them off as standing outside the province of regular and ordinary law. Let us pass on, then, to consider what are the normal and neces- sary marks, in a civilized commonwealth, of justice administered according to law. They seem capable of being reduced to gen- erality, equality, and certainty. First, as to generality, the rule of justice is a rule for citizens as such. It cannot be a rule merely for the individual ; as the mediaeval glossators put it, there cannot
