ABSTRACT
The Local Act is a Parliamentary statute enacted, like any other, by the King “by and with the advice and consent” of the House of Lords and House of Commons. The Local Acts constituted, during the century and a half, actually the greater part, so far as bulk is concerned, of the legislative output of Parliament. This chapter describes the ancient Courts of Sewers, with their archaic and partly traditional organisation of juries and presentments. By the beginning of the nineteenth century the economic organisation of society had almost entirely changed. The landowners had come to let the soil on commercial contracts for steadily increasing rents to farmers who could invest, in what became essentially a business enterprise, capitals of from a few hundred to some thousands of pounds each.
