practical value in the United States. It is believed, however, that the leading English decisions, more especially those of the most recent date, will be found referred to, and often stated at considerable length. At the present moment, when the indications are so strong, of a prevailing desire to have the events of the last four years treated as if they had never been, it is perhaps hardly necessary to remark, that, in citing the American cases, no distinction is made between the Northern and Southern States. It so happens, that the decisions of Southern courts upon the subject of injunction are comparatively very numerous. Every lawyer knows, that the judgments of those tribunals often bear a favorable comparison with those of any others in the land. Upon the one great subject, which now seems to have providentially disappeared from the broad surface of American social and civil life, the remarks of a distinguished jurist are no exaggeration, even as applied to Southern judges; to whom, indeed, it would seem they are almost exclusively applicable, not from want of disposition, but of opportunity, in any others, to illustrate them. "As slavery is in derogation of natural right, and exists only by positive institution, the courts of this country, actuated by the spirit of the common law, have always been disposed to apply the maxim, jura in omni casu libertati dant favorem." "For the trial of the question of freedom—in all the cases in the books it seems that a wide indulgence is

granted to the claimant, and the court will not suffer him to be defeated by an omission of formalities of procedure."(a)

If Southern courts and judges have thus humanely and manfully withstood those legislative and popular influences, which are very far from being entitled to the commendation just quoted; their integrity as well as ability may well entitle their adjudications upon any subject to be received everywhere with undiminished respect.

Injunction has been a subject of much statutory regulation. While, as I have already remarked, the prevailing tendency now is, to adopt equity into American jurisprudence; the distinction is very generally abrogated between courts of law and equity, and in some instances between proceedings in law and equity. The aphorism of Lord Bacon, to the practical wisdom of which, notwithstanding the theoretical absurdity of two codes of law, each administered by its own tribunal, in the same government, many will even now be disposed to assent, is pretty extensively set at nought in American legislation. 'Apud nonnullos receptum est, ut jurisdictio, quæ discernit secundum æquum et bonum, atque illa altera, quæ procedit secundum jus strictum, iisdem curiis deputentur: apud alios autem, ut diversis; omnino placet curiarum separatio. Neque enim servabitur distinctio casuum,

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(a) Parsons on Contracts (3d ed.), pp. 326, 328.

si fiat commixio jurisdictionum, sed arbitrium legem tandem trahet."(a)

The result has been, with reference to the subject of injunction, that in many of the States injunctions may be granted by the courts, or the judges thereof, miscellaneously. The same power is sometimes, though not often, conferred upon mere ministerial officers of the courts. From this consolidation of law and equity, other changes, also, have necessarily ensued, with reference to a proceeding which in its origin was so strictly equitable. In the Appendix will be found a summary statement of the statutory provisions in the several States; as also of some of the latest cases, which were not inserted in the body of the work.

With regard to the plan and arrangement of the present work, it will be seen that the first six chapters, as compared with those which follow, are of a general and comprehensive character. The succeeding chapters, relating to the grounds, parties, and subjects of injunction, are necessarily more brief and fragmentary, the same points and cases having been previously stated in some other connection. And this threefold division itself is unavoidably somewhat inaccurate; the respective questions, for what injury, by or against what person, and in reference to

(a) Bacon, de Aug. Scient., lib. 8, chap. 3, aph. 45.

what subject-matter, an injunction may issue, from the very nature of the case often running into each other. The division adopted, whether good or bad, is my own. It may follow, but has not been borrowed from that of any other work. F. H.