iv

reign received some valuable touches from your experienced hand; and that to the merit of having taught the student how to win the steep ascent to legal eminence, and the rarer merit of having shown how that eminence is best adorned by unaffected learning and unassuming manners, you are willing to add the enduring honour of having contributed to amend the laws of your country.

Permit me to unite with those associates of your former toil who are still bound to the oar, in hoping that leisure so well earned and so usefully employed, may be long and uninterrupted ;-cheered by the consciousness of living in the grateful recollection of the Equity Bar, which your professional character has exalted, and of the many friends whom your kindness has attached.

I am, Sir,

Your very obliged and obedient,

WILLIAM HAYES.

CLOISTERS, TEMPLE,

March 24, 1835.

PREFACE

TO

THE SECOND EDITION.

ANOTHER impression of this Work has been

called for sooner than the Writer had anticipated. He has, however, revised the Work throughout, and endeavoured, as well by numerous corrections as by some, not inconsiderable additions, to retain the favourable opinion which this early demand would seem to indicate. The practical importance of the new Statute Law has induced him to direct his chief attention to the rendering of the chapter on that subject more accurate and complete, especially with reference to the changes effected by the Fine and Recovery Act.

As no reliance ought to be placed upon any interpretation of the New Statutes without submitting it to the test of a comparison with the very letter of the enactment, it has been

thought desirable to append the Statutes themselves to this volume, adding only such heads to the divisions and sections of the longer statutes as may assist the practitioner in analyzing them or in finding the clause or subject required.

When it is considered that the new Acts have scarcely been the subject of adjudication, and that the opinions entertained in the profession concerning them have not, except in a few instances, transpired, it will be thought, perhaps, that the comments now submitted are chargeable, less with the want of fulness of information, than with the presumption of adventuring too confidently upon ground so little trodden.

Several bills are in progress, and others, it is understood, are in contemplation, partly to reform the old law and partly to amend the new. The projected measures include a bill relating to the Transfer of Property; a bill relating to the Execution, Operation, and even the Construction of Wills (a); a bill relating to the Constitution and Jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Courts,

(a) The policy of requiring all testamentary dispositions to be attested by two witnesses is extremely questionable.

including provisions for the future Cognizance of Wills both of Real and of Personal Estate; a bill to facilitate the Enfranchisement of Copyholds; a bill to amend the Law of Tenure and Escheat; a bill to amend and extend Sir Edward Sugden's Act relating to Infant Trustees, &c.; a bill or bills to amend the New Acts, particularly the Fine and Recovery Act and the Limitation Act;-some of which may pass into laws in the course of the present session, unless it should be considered expedient to allow further time for the late additions to the Statute Book to settle and consolidate, before new materials are accumulated. It is the Writer's intention to keep pace, if possible, with this career of Legislation, by extending his view of the amended law, so as to enable the Practitioner who, though impressed with the necessity of knowing something more than that certain branches of the law have been altered, yet cannot undertake the study of a new system, the means of acquiring, at a moderate expense of time and labour, sufficient knowledge of the nature and extent of the alterations to guide him in their ordinary application.

With the exception of the lights afforded by Mr. Jarman's Commentary on the New Acts in his Work on Conveyancing, and the contributions of Mr. Ingram, the Author has received little assistance in his endeavours to illustrate the new law. Disquisitions on the old law, or rather compilations from the old books, are, indeed, numerous and copious, and are not without their use; but the new law has been left, for the most part, to speak for itself.

Much has been effected in the way of juridical reform; more, perhaps, yet remains to be done. Let us hope, however, that whatever is henceforth undertaken in that difficult field will be thoroughly weighed; and that bills, affecting so deeply the permanent interests of the country as those which touch the system of real property law, will not be urged through the session in order to close it with better effect in the estimation of the many who applaud changes which they cannot justly appreciate.

24th March, 1835.