430255

AUG 1 9 1948

Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1875,

By JAMES COCKCROFT & COMPANY,

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.

MR. ADDISON's work on The Law of Torts does not need any words of commendation from me. He is known to the profession as a careful, thorough, and perfectly reliable author, who goes to the foundation of his subject, and presents it in all its phases. There is such an identity between the law applicable to private wrongs in England and this country, as to render an English work upon the subject fully as valuable, and I am inclined to think even more valuable to an American lawyer, than one purely American. Our law in this respect derives its origin and foundation from English statutes and the decisions of English courts; therefore with the text of an English work accompanied with American notes, a lawyer is much better able to find what the law really is upon a given question, than he is from a work which does not embrace all the principles underlying the questions involved. Mr. Hilliard's treatise upon The Law of Torts is really an accompaniment to this work. No lawyer's library can be said to be complete without both of them. No two men have the same habits, or mode of thought, or present the multifarious phases of an intricate and almost inexhaustible subject in the same manner. Therefore when two able authors write upon the same subject, it is always important for a lawyer to have both works

as he will find many topics treated, and authorities referred to in the one, that are not touched in the other. This is well illustrated in the work upon Negligence by Messrs. Shearman & Redfield, and the work by Dr. Wharton, upon the same subject. They are both mast excellent works, and yet the one does not displace the other, but the two are indispensable to a lawyer, and the reason for it is, that the subject is so differently treated by the different authors, and the topics discussed are so differently presented, that with both works a lawyer can generally find the doctrine and authorities covering a topic he may have in hand, whereas, with only one of them, he might search in vain. Such is the precise position, in my judgment, between the works of Mr. Addison and Mr. Hilliard on The Law of Torts. Both are indispensable to a careful lawyer, and the one is "a hand-maid" to the other. Mr. Addison's work has long been favorably known in this country, and has been often cited by our courts with approbation upon doubtful and difficult questions. An abridged edition of the work has been adopted, and is still used in some of our law schools, and the text has probably been more largely cited by American text-writers, than any other modern English work.

The text is left intact, except some minor additions made thereto, which seemed warranted by recent English decisions.

Trusting that my labors have added to the usefulness of a most thorough and valuable treatise, I submit the work to the profession.

H. G. WOOD.

ALBANY, N. Y., January, 1876.

CONTENTS.