Private Bill Legislation in the Nineteenth Century: Parliamentary Promotion from 1797 to 1914

This book explores the passing of more than 20,000 private Acts from 1797 to 1914, including information about the many other Bills that were unsuccessfully promoted, and the evidence that Parliament took about the processes and costs involved.Its subject analysis is accompanied by explanation of the evolving procedures involved, with citation of evidence given—sometimes by well-known witnesses such as George and Robert Stephenson, and Brunel—to the repeated Select Committees that examined the often disproportionately expensive procedures required.For each Parliamentary session, the book provides the totals of Bills and Acts, and the associated Parliamentary reports and papers. The ability to obtain private powers was a cornerstone of the development of nineteenth-century Britain, and of the physical re-shaping, infrastructure and company organisations of the Victorian era. Without private Act powers, the creation of canals, railways and improvement commissions, as well as many other business initiatives, could not have occurred—yet how they came to be promoted and passed has never been systematically analysed and recorded, until now.

About the Author :
Roger Morris read Law at Peterhouse, Cambridge and went into local government at St. Helens and later Grimsby, eventually becoming Chief Executive in Durham City and later at Northampton. After retiring, he served as Chair of Northampton College for a decade, and was awarded an OBE for services to Further Education in 2014. He is still a Solicitor, and Chair of the Law Society’s Diploma Board for Local Government Law and Practice, UK. He has published many articles and a dozen books, most notably Parliament and the Public Libraries; Solicitors and Local Authorities; Local Government Ground Rules; Will You Manage? The Needs of Local Authority Chief Executives (with Roger Paine); and nine editions of Running Elections (with Mark Heath). He received his PhD from Leicester University, UK.

Review :
"This is a book of consummate scholarship. It should not be assumed, however, that this is a book of purely academic and historical interest. With private legislation, as with all matters, those who would understand the present must first understand the past; and those who would influence the future must understand the past particularly well. […] As one would expect from a scholarly work of this kind, the appendices will be of significant value to future students of legislation, as well as to students of the social history that lies beneath the surface of private legislation in the same way that political history lies beneath the service of public legislation. In particular, the analyses of the numbers and distribution of local private and personal Acts will be invaluable. The appendices contain other gems including the summary of the 1838 Symonds analysis of private legislation. […] As an Examiner of Private Bills who is about to move on to other Parliamentary pastures and hand the baton to colleagues, I cannot help but regret the timing of the publication of this book, as it would have afforded me much useful food for thought during my time as an Examiner over the last six years. Knowing, however, that reliable corporate memory is absolutely key to the orderly and effective development of private bill procedure, I leave my post with enhanced confidence knowing that my successors will have the assistance of this valuable volume."Daniel Greenberg, CBStatute Law Review, Lawyer/ Legislator"There is […] a substantial portion of the book fortuitously related to railways, and the front cover is even illustrated by a railway scene. The booksuggests even that industrial progress was temporarily held up by the massive overload of private Bills during the railway manias."David Pedley, Journal of the Railway & Canal Historical Society, Volume 41, Part 1