The Grammar Grudge of 1876

Blackstone, when he said that statute laws were to be construed by their reason and spirit, grammatical rules to the contrary notwithstanding, said what all great lawyers have since recognized. Even a person with so little sense and knowledge of etiquette as the editor of the Seattle Daily Tribune gives an example of the verity of the rule at the same time that he exhibits his lack of good breeding. In his issue of March 16th, in trying to ridicule the composition of a clause which he has frequently to publish, instead of privately pointing out what he claims to be an error, he says the clause complained of is 'shall be constructed of planks two inches thick and six feet wide,' when he (the editor) means that the sidewalk (not the planks) shall be 'six inches wide.' The most remarkable thing in this is that he understands the meaning of it, but thinks that others, not so clever as himself, might attribute it to the ease with which such remarkable lumber may be obtained in this timbered region. But the more remarkable thing is that he ignores his own [errors] in the same issue of his paper, where a section of the ordinance given him for publication reads: 'This ordinance shall take effect and be in force ten days after its publication,' and after undergoing 'revision and grammatical finishing' by this very young man, reads as follows: 'This ordinance shall within effect and be in force ten days after its publication.' Oh, Mr. Tribune editor, will you not give us a little more news and a little less grammar? Oh, City Publisher, publish your ordinances so that your pupils who will not revise them before publication may be saved from thus drawing our citizens into the reasoning of Caligula who, according to Suetonius, wrote his laws in a very small character and hung them on high pillars so that nobody could read them.