† 1. A book containing an Act of Parliament. Obs.
1593. R. Holtby, in J. Morris, Troubles Cath. Forefathers (1877), 223. Some of the jury required the statute book, that they might proceed the more assuredly.
2. The book containing the statutes of a nation or state; usually (sing., occas. pl.) the whole series of volumes forming the official record of the statutes. Phrase, on the statute-book.
a. 1648. Ld. Herbert, Hen. VIII. (1649), 368. In which many Acts pass’d, the most materiall whereof, I have set down briefly, not always according to the order observed in the Statute-Book, but rather according to the matters handled.
1675. Baxter, Cath. Theol., VIII. II. 175. They searched the whole Scripture, read over the Statute-Book, and all the Common Law-Books and Cases, that they could get.
1705. Addison, Italy, St. Marino, 133. I saw in their Statute-Book a Law against such as speak disrespectfully of him.
1765. Blackstone, Comm., I. Introd. § 3. 85. The oldest of these now extant, and printed in our statute books, is the famous magna carta.
1815. J. Smith, Panorama Sci. & Art, II. 585. If the game-laws were only a dead letter on our statute-books.
1825. Syd. Smith, Sp., Wks. 1859, II. 200/2. I should have said, that the disabling laws against the Catholics were a disgrace to the statute-book.
1827. Hallam, Const. Hist., xvii. (1876), III. 310. We must not look to the statute-book of Scotland for many limitations of monarchy.
1863. Fawcett, Pol. Econ., II. viii. (1876), 223. Our own statute-book proves that the attempt has frequently been made to regulate wages by law.
1871. C. Davies, Metric Syst., III. 85. In England … the statute-books are filled with ineffectual attempts of the legislature to establish uniformity.
fig. 1831. Carlyle, Sartor Res., III. viii. Those same unalterable rules, forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature.
