A TREATISE ON THE LAW OF EXECUTORS AND ADMINISTRATORS BY SIR EDWARD VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, Ninth English Edition BY SIR ROLAND L. VAUGHAN WILLIAMS, KNT., Seventh American Edition BY JOSEPH F. RANDOLPH AND WILLIAM TALCOTT, OF THE NEW JERSEY BAR. IN THREE VOLUMES. VOLUME I. JERSEY CITY. FREDERICK D. LINN & CO., LAW PUBLISHERS. PREFACE TO THE SEVENTH AMERICAN EDITION. WILLIAMS ON EXECUTORS has been for more than twenty-five years an unexhausted and unsurpassed fountain of authority. It is no disadvantage that it dates from a day when cases were properly examined, accurately and fully stated, carefully weighed, and judiciously discussed. These considerations give to this book a permanent value, which its English and somewhat antiquated form cannot take from it. No text-book of this century has been more cited in the most recent arguments and decisions of our own courts. The American Editors have, at the request of the English publishers, and with the assignment of their copyright in the United States, taken up the heavy but pleasant task of adding an American volume to the work for American use. In doing this we have endeavored to give a complete and accurate statement of the law as expressed in all the states, avoiding dicta and necessarily striving after the utmost brevity. The references in the English notes to English editions of textbooks are not changed, but the American references are to last American editions. The citations of Jarman on Wills refer to the fifth American (R. and T.) edition, in three volumes. In the midst of the task Mr. Talcott was stricken with serious illness, and he has died before its completion after doing much hard and honest work in the early part of the book. JERSEY CITY, 1894. Jos. F. RANDOLPH. fil |