A TEXT-BOOK ON COMMERCIAL LAW; A Manual of the Fundamental Principles Governing FOR THE USE OF Commercial Colleges, High Schools and Academies. BY SALTER S. CLARK, Counsellor at Law, REVISER OF YOUNG'S GOVERNMENT CLASS-BOOK. NEW YORK: CLARK & MAYNARD, PUBLISHERS, 734 BROADWAY, 1885, PREFACE. THE design of the author in this volume has been to present, simply and compactly, the principles of law affecting the ordinary transactions of commercial life, in the form of a class-book for schools and commercial colleges. Youths who are soon to take an active part in business matters should certainly know something of the responsibilities they are to assume, the legal consequences of their acts. This That heretofore this subject has formed but a small part of the ordinary educational system, is due partly, perhaps, to the idea that law is too weighty and intricate to be taught to the young. would be so were it taught at all in detail, or technically. But, it is thought, a book confining itself to principles, stating them in the plainest language, and presenting them as a consistent and interdependent system, would be useful. A knowledge of principles is often the only guide one has, and it must be useful because it indicates the general rule. Every man does govern his actions, in business and elsewhere, upon some principles gained or stumbled upon in the course of his experience. But it were much better to have these, and many others which could not be learned from experience, planted in the mind while it was plastic. Experience also gives its principles merely as isolated facts; a book does, or should, give them in their proper relations, and show how, as is very often the case, what appears to be an exception to some rule is but the application of one more important. Again the study of its principles must impress one with the fact that law is in the main only common sense and common morality, a conviction which is in itself a good guide, and sometimes in practical life the only guide one has. The plan of the book is as follows: After a short introduction upon the relations of National and State law, and of constitutional, statute, and common law, it is divided into two parts. Part I. treats of principles applicable to all kinds of business, in three divisions treating respectively of Contracts, Agency and Partnership, with a fourth division embracing the subject of Corporations and a few others general in their nature. Part II. takes up in order the most prominent kinds of business transactions, paying chief attention to the subjects, Sale of Goods, and Commercial Paper, and is to a large extent an application of the principles contained in the preceding part. A few chapters on real estate are added, as likely to be useful, though the subject is not strictly within the title of the book. The chief aim has been throughout to make it a book practically useful, and one easily taught, understood, and remembered. As subserving those purposes attention may be called to the following features among others: the use of schemes in graded type, which summarizing a subject impress it upon the mind through the eye; the summaries of leading rules at different points; a table of definitions; the forms of business papers most frequently met with; and the frequent use of illustrations and cross-references. It is submitted with the hope that it may not be found unsuited to its design. NEW YORK, 1882, SALTER S. CLARK. |