PREFACE

TO THE SECOND EDITION.

WHEN this work was first published, it was hoped that it would be found to supply, in some degree, a want which was believed to have been felt, although on different occasions, both by the student and the lawyer occupied in actual practice.

The student, when he devotes himself to the perusal of Law, is frequently advised by experienced friends, that he ought early to habituate himself to the perusal of Reports at large, instead of pinning his faith upon the commentaries and abridgements of the treatise writers

Melius est," says Lord Coke, "petere fontes quam sectari rivulos"-When, however, he attempts to follow this advice, he finds himself astray amid the masses of accumulated lore which the Reports present to him, the "aliarum super alias acervatarum legum cumuli:"

he feels his judgment perplexed, his choice distracted, and his immediate wish is that some guide would direct him to the leading cases, embodied in which he might discover those great principles of Law of which it is necessary that he should render himself thorough master, before he can trace with accuracy the numerous ramifications into which those principles are expanded in the surrounding multitude of decisions.

The lawyer engaged in actual business frequently also feels the want of a portable collection of leading cases, but for a different reason. The leading cases are those with the names of which he is most familiar, which he has most frequently occasion to consult, and which, consequently, he would, if it were practicable, willingly carry into court or round the circuit with him.

It was therefore thought that this collection might prove of some utility to both the classes of Readers just described. The cases it contains may all, it is believed, be properly denominated "leading cases." Each involves, and is usually cited to establish, some point or principle of real practical importance. In order that the consequences of each may be understood, and its authority estimated as easily as possible, notes have been subjoined, in which are collected subsequent decisions bearing on the points reported in the text, and in which doctrines having

some obvious connexion with them are occasionally discussed. This, though of course the least valuable part of the work, has cost its author by far the greatest labour and anxiety; care has been taken in executing it not to allow the notes to digress so far from the subject matter of the text, as to distract the reader's mind from that to which they ought to be subsidiary. In perusing them, it will be found that the facts of some of the cases cited are set forth at considerable length, and portions of the judgments transcribed verbatim. This is done only when the case cited is itself of such importance as to merit the appellation of a leading case, with an abridgement of which the reader is thus furnished, where it could not, consistently with the plan of the work, be presented to him entire. As to the references in the margin, they are in some instances taken from previous editions of the same case; for others, the present editor is responsible: the former are connected with the text by letters, the latter by the sign t.

In this second edition, the paging of the former one has been preserved. This has been done because some gentlemen had, in works of much greater value, done this the honour of referring to it; and it was thought desirable that those references should be applicable to this edition as well as the former. The place where

a page in the former edition terminated and a new one commenced, is shown by the sign * in the text, and the

*

corresponding sign at the top of the page. Thus the first page of the former edition terminated at the word resolved, and the second page began with the figure 1,

at which there is now an in the second page of this edition.

12, King's Bench Walk,

Feb. 28, 1841.

J. W. S.