16. The meaning of the word ‘Receipt’ - Page 116

THE MEANING . . . . . . . . . ‘RECEIPT’ 93

certain meaning without intending to depart from that meaning. “When the Legislature,” said Blackburn, J., in R. V. Buttle (k), “change the words of an enactment, no doubt it must be taken prima facie that there was an intention to change the meaning.” This, however is not necessarily so, for we find, as a matter of fact, that, as Blackburn, J. observed in Hadley v. Perks (1), “in drawing Acts of Parliament, the Legislature, as it would seem, to improve the graces of the style, and to avoid using the same words over and over again, constantly change” the words without intending to change the meaning. Thus, in Re Wright (m), Mellish, L.J., said, with regard to the departure in the Bankruptcy Act,

1869, from the language used in the repealed Bankruptcy Act, 1849; “Every one who is familiar with the present Act knows that the language of the former Acts has been very much altered in many cases where it could not have been intended to make any change in the law.” In Actt.-Gen. V. Bradlaugh (n), it was contended that the word “made” in the expression in the Parliamentary Oaths Act, 1866, “the oath shall be made,” was to be construed as if it were different from the word “taken”. “But,” said Brett, M. R., “it seems to me, looking at the Preamble, and at the manner in which the word is used, that the word ‘made’ has precisely the same effect as if it were “taken”.

In Monteith v. McGavin (o), Lord Cottenham said that “when Parliament provides for a particular mode of proceeding in one particular case, and makes no such provision in another case, it must not, as a general rule, be assumed that this arises from mere negligence or inattention in the framers of the Act.” But, as Brett M. R. said in Nottage v. Jackson (p), “persons who draw Acts of Parliament will sometimes use phrases that nobody else uses; consequently we do sometimes meet with expressions in statutes which we are compelled to believe were introduced, not for any specific purpose, but in consequence of the slovenliness of the draftsman.” Thus, in R. v. Buttle (q), the question was whether, when 26 &

28 Vict. c. 29, s. 7, enacted that “no statement made by