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WILLS.

INTRODUCTION.

TION.

WE shall not follow the example of others who INTRODUChave written on the preparation of wills, in expatiating on the difficulty of this branch of professional work; since, if we adopt the famous definition of a difficulty as "something to be overcome," then the greater the difficulty so much the more desirable is it for the practitioner to have a reasonable confidence in his own powers, accompanied by that kind of caution which shows itself in practical vigilance, not in an apprehension of incompetence for his task, which is in itself one of the greatest of disqualifications.

If an experienced practitioner were asked, how skill in the drafting of wills can be acquired, his answer would, no doubt, be somewhat to this effect"by practice and experience, engrafted upon a previous knowledge of legal principles: " and from a certain point of view it may be said that these qualifications contain in themselves both the bane and the antidote; for the man who has no legal knowledge whatever will draw what a lawyer would

B

INTRODUC

TION.

consider a difficult will, without hesitation or doubt; while he, who has theoretical knowledge merely, will have skill to see the difficulties, but not to surmount them. The former

incedit per ignes

Suppositos cineri doloso,

perfectly happy so long as not actually scorched; the latter shrinks back in nervous apprehension of the thousand dangers to which knowledge has opened his eyes. It is only he who combines theory, practice, and experience who can at once avoid the surrounding perils and trace out for himself a path of safety.

Although solicitors are, for the most part, amply endowed with theoretical knowledge, we yet venture to think that this advantage is too often suffered to "rust in them unused;" and that it is their custom to rely too implicitly on precedents, only taking the trouble to satisfy themselves that the precedent chosen was framed with a view to a similar state of facts to that with which they now have to deal, and then adopting it without much inquiry as to the necessity of its various clauses, or any endeavour to criticise and modify it in harmony with more recent practice, and with a view to what the law and the special circumstances really and essentially require.

It is with a view therefore to promoting the study of the various forms used in the preparation of wills, with reference as well to legal principles as to the practical requirements of particular cases, that we have adopted the plan of adding, at the foot of each precedent, notes explaining the meaning and object

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