ARGUED AND DETERMINED IN The Court of King's Bench, IN THE TWENTY-SECOND, TWENTY-THIRD, TWENTY-FOURTH, AND FROM THE MANUSCRIPTS OF The Right Hon. SYLVESTER DOUGLAS, 1. BARON GLENBERVIE. AND ALSO FROM THE MANUSCRIPTS OF MR. JUSTICE LAWRENCE, MR. JUSTICE LE BLANC, MR. GEORGE VOL. III. BY HENRY ROSCOE, ESQ. OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER AT LAW. LONDON: S. SWEET, 3, CHANCERY LANE, AND STEVENS AND SONS, 39, BELL YARD, AND R. MILLIKEN AND SON, GRAFTON STREET, DUBLIN. 1831. PREFACE. IT was at one period the intention of Lord Glenbervie to complete the series of Reports originally published by him in the year 1782, by adding the Decisions of the Court of King's Bench, from Trinity Term, 21 Geo. III., to Michaelmas Term, 25 Geo. III., when the Reports of Messrs. Durnford and East commence. With this view he had prepared, in many instances, the statements of the cases, and had made notes of the arguments of counsel, and of the judgment of the Court. Lord Glenbervie having relinquished the design of preparing these Reports for the press, the MSS. were placed in the hands of Mr. Serjeant Frere, the Editor of the 4th Edition of " Douglas's Reports," by whom considerable progress was made towards their publication. The statements of the whole of the cases in the fourth volume were prepared, and to many of them the arguments and judgments were added. The cases, from Michaelmas Term, 22 Geo. III., to Michaelmas Term, 24 Geo. III. (now comprised in the third volume), were, however, left almost untouched, either by Lord Glenbervie, or by Mr. Serjeant Frere. a 2 In this state the MSS. were put into the hands of the writer of this Preface, accompanied by the contemporary note books of Mr. Justice Le Blanc, Mr. Justice Lawrence, and of Mr. George Wilson, through the liberality and kindness of H. P. Standly, Esq., and Thomas Le Blanc, Esq., the present Master of the Court of King's Bench. In addition to these highly valuable sources of information, he was furnished with two small volumes containing notes taken by Mr. Justice Buller and by Lord Glenbervie himself, and also with some of the note-books of Sir Thomas Davenport and of Mr. Bowyer. Several volumes of notes by an unknown hand, apparently taken with care and accuracy, were also added. From these copious materials the writer has compiled nearly the whole of the third volume, and has supplied the arguments and judgments in the fourth volume, not inserted by Mr. Serjeant Frere. In preparing the cases, he found the notes of Mr. George Wilson most valuable for their fulness and apparent correctness, and by a collation of these with the copious notes of Mr. Justice Le Blanc, the third volume of the present Reports has been principally prepared, though the notes of the other contemporary reporters were frequently found useful in elucidating doubtful passages and in supplying deficiencies. The mode thus adopted of preparing the Reports was that which was practised by Lord Glenbervie himself, whose own notes do not appear to have been very copious, and who relied much upon the labours of his friends. "The judgments of the Court," he observes in his preface, “I could have wished to give in the words in which they were delivered. But this I often found to be impracticable, as I neither write short-hand nor very quickly. Memory, however, while the case was recent, supplied, at home, many of the chasms which I had left in Court; and by comparing and, as it were, confronting a variety of notes taken by others with my own, I was frequently enabled to recall and insert in my report material passages which I should otherwise have lost." Of a large proportion of the decisions reported in these volumes, short, and, in many cases, imperfect notes have been long before the profession, in various text-books, in the notes to later reported cases, and in the arguments of counsel. This circumstance will not affect the value of the present publication, when the distinction between the few lines in which a text-writer embodies the effect of a decision, and a full statement of the case, with the arguments of the counsel and the judgment of the Court, is considered. In some instances, copious and accurate reports of the cases are to be found, as in the settlement cases reported by Mr. Caldecott, between Trinity 22 Geo. III. and Trinity 24 Geo. III. These have been omitted in the preparation of the third volume, and a reference substituted to Mr. Caldecott's Reports. In every instance, indeed, where a note or report of the same case has appeared, a reference to the volume in which it is inserted will be found. |