PUBLIC, in the legal sense of the term, are contemporary statements of the proceedings in those courts of law which are courts of record, written upon rolls of parchment. In a popular sense, the name is given to all public documents preserved in a recognised repository. There is no country in the world so rich as ours in stores of public records, in all branches of its government, whether constitutional, judicial, parliamentary, or fiscal. During the last sixty years upwards of a million of pounds sterling has been expended by the appointment of successive commissioners and parliamentary committees of inquiry on these records; and an act of Parliament was passed (1 and 2 Vict., c. 94), whereby a special agency was constituted for their proper custody. The agency thus specially appointed was the Master of the Rolls. The records of our earlier history are kept on rolls written on skins of parchment and vellum, from nine to fourteen inches wide, and about three feet in length. Sometimes these are attached together, bookwise, by the tops; sometimes they are sewed together consecutively. The earliest record written on paper is during the reign of Edward II. These documents are recorded in Norman-French, Latin, and English, which became the prevailing language of records in the reign of the second George. The public records are now being methodized, regulated, digested, and bound, besides being calendared and indexed. The task is a gigantic one; and if one may judge from a single specimen,—the Court of Common Pleas,—some 1200 miles of parchment, 9 inches wide, will require patiently to be read through, before any one can consult these important records with any degree of facility. By a recent regulation of the Master of the Rolls, literary inquirers are permitted to search for and make notes of records gratis, provided they can satisfy the deputy-keeper that their application is for a bona fide literary purpose. Besides the offices for modern records attached to each court, there are the following repositories in which different branches of the public records are to be found:—

The Tower, Thames Street; Chapter-House, Westminster Abbey; Rolls Chapel, Chancery Lane; Duchy of Lancaster, Lancaster Place, Strand; Duchy of Cornwall, Somerset House; Common Pleas, Carlton Ride and Whitehall Yard; Queen's Remembrancer's Records in Carlton Ride and Tower of Westminster Hall; Augmentation Office, Palace-Yard, Westminster; Pipe Office, Somerset House; Lord Treasurer's Remembrancer, Somerset House; Land Revenue, Carlton Ride; Peli-Office, 1 Whitehall Yard; Exchequer Plas, 3 Whitehall Yard; First-Fruits Office, Temple.

The best works of general reference as to the subjects of the public records is the Report of the Select Committee of 1800.