11-28-36 PRE FACE. THE ensuing work, treating, as it does, of contracts of purchase and sale, letting and hiring, borrowing and lending, agency and partnership; and of the rights and liabilities of landlord and tenant, workman and employer, master and servant, and apprentice, principal and agent, and surety, husband and wife, joint stock companies, shipowners and shipmasters, innkeepers, carriers, infants, lunatics, &c. &c.; and the stamping and legal authentication and interpretation of contracts, will be found useful, it is hoped, to suitors in the NEW COUNTY COURTS. It is unnecessary to dilate at length upon the vast importance of the law of contracts, upon its intrinsic excellence and merits, and the advantage of an acquaintance with its general rules and principles to every man of business, as well as to the professed lawyer. From a cursory glance at the contents of the present volume, it will be abundantly evident that there are few mercantile transactions that can be entered into and conducted with safety without some knowledge of the subjects therein treated of. In Germany and Holland the study of the law has long constituted an essential branch of a liberal education; and it is surprising, that in a commercial country like our own, so little attention should be paid by the public at large to the science of jurisprudence, or at all events to those general rules and principles of our ancient and excellent common law which regulate and control the ordinary intercourse of mankind, and define and ascertain the rights and liabilities of parties under the varying events and circumstances of daily life. There is scarcely an individual of any property or station in the country, who does not every week, nor any mercantile man who does not every day of the week, nay every hour of the day, contract the obligations, or acquire the rights, of a buyer or seller, of a hirer or letter to hire, of a debtor or creditor, of a borrower or lender, of a depositor or depositary, of a commissioner or employer, of a receiver or agent, or trustee; and it is absurd, as well as dangerous, for a man to contract obligations, and acquire rights, of which he has no just or accurate perception, and involve himself in liabilities and responsibilities, without knowing the nature and extent of them. There was a period in the history of this country when a knowledge of the law was considered an essential part of education; and Sir John Fortescue tells us, that in his time there were in the inns of court two thousand students, the sons of knights and barons, who were placed there, not to be thoroughly learned in the law, or to get their living by its practice, but to be fitted for the exercise of their duties in private life as noblemen and gentlemen. Lectures and readings on jurisprudence have recently been revived in the inns of court, and some attempt has been made to recommence the teaching of the law as a science, in localities where it has long been practised only as an art; but 243 |