CONTENTS. 2-Petition of the San Francisco Lying-in Hospital and Foundling Asylum. 3-Report of the Directors of the Napa State Asylum for the Insane. 4-Report of the Loan Commissioners of the State of California. 5-Report of the Swamp Land Investigating Committee. 6-Report of the Senate Committee on Claims on Senate Bill No. 306. 7-Report of Senate State Hospital Committee on Stockton Insane Asylum. 8--Petition of citizens of San Francisco relative to arbitrary exactions and injustices of 9-Report of Assembly Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds in relation to the construction of the College of Letters. 10-Investigation of alleged frauds in the construction of the College of Letters-Testi- mony taken by the Assembly Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds. 11-Report of Committee appointed to investigate the affairs of the San Francisco City 12-Report of the Testimony and Proceedings had before the Senate Committee on Corpo- BOUND BY F. FOSTER, SACRAMENTO. T. A. SPRINGER.... STATE PRINTER. The undersigned, heretofore requested by you "to serve as a Commission to examine the Codes adopted by the last Legislature, and to prepare such amendments as seem to be necessary, for the consideration of the next Legislature," respectfully report: That we organized our Commission on the twenty-first day of June, A. D. eighteen hundred and seventy-three, and have since that time assiduously devoted ourselves to that work. We found the four Codes--the Political Code, the Penal Code, the Civil Code, and the Code of Civil Procedure-as prepared by the Commissioners and enacted by the Legislature, perfect in their analysis, admirable in their order and arrangement, and furnishing a complete code of laws; the first time, we believe, that such a result has been achieved by any portion of the Anglo-Saxon or British races. It seems inexplicable that those peoples, who boast of being the most fully imbued with the sentiment of law, have left their laws in the most confused condition, resting partly in tradition, but for the greater part scattered through thousands of volumes of books of statutes and reports, and thus practically inaccessible to the mass of the people. That California has been the first of this class to enact a complete code of municipal law will add not only to the prosperity of her people, but redound to her honor as a State. If the work of the Commissioners needed revision, it was mostly owing to obstacles which neither their ability nor industry could overcome. We found that the Codes needed revision more for the purpose of harmonizing their respective provisions, than for any other. This want of complete harmony was a result inevitable to the short period of time which the Commissioners had for the preparation of their work. At the same time, it was found that many definitions taken from the proposed Codes of New York, which had never been enacted there, did not stand the test of examination; and that many legislative provisions would change our settled law of twenty-two years' standing, and not |