BENCHER OF THE INNER TEMPLE, METROPOLITAN MAGISTRATE, EDITOR OF
ADDISON ON CONTRACTS," ADDISON ON TORTS,"

66

CRIMINAL EVIDENCE," ETC.

AND

"ROSCOE'S

A. P. PERCEVAL KEEP, M.A.,

OF THE MIDLAND CIRCUIT, BARRISTER AT LAW.

LONDON:

STEVENS AND SONS, LIMITED, 119 & 120, CHANCERY LANE;
SWEET AND MAXWELL, LIMITED, 3, CHANCERY LANE;

BOSTON, U.S.A.: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY.
Law Publishers and Booksellers.

1896.

UNIVERSITY PRESS :

JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.

PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION.

THE last Edition of this work was published in the year 1877. Since that time a very considerable change has taken place both in the laws themselves and in their administration. The number of new statutes and new cases which have been incorporated in the text must have materially increased the bulk of the volumes, had not an endeavour been made to expunge superfluous matter and to abbreviate occasionally where such a course seemed possible. In furtherance of this end, also, a large number of decisions on repealed statutes which seemed still to be of value to the practitioner have been relegated to appendices in Volumes II. and III., and printed in smaller type. In the result, it will be found that the present work is only a few pages longer than the last Edition.

The merits of the work as a whole are so well-known and appreciated that any radical attempt to alter its design and scope would only produce disappointment; yet the Editors have found that some slight change in the disposition of the subjects of the various Books had become advisable in consequence of an alteration in the position of the chapters in the last Edition for which no sufficient reason seemed to be assigned.

The chapters are now arranged according to their subject-matter, and not according to the exigencies of symmetry in the size of each volume; although, as a matter of fact, it will be found that the three volumes of the