ΤΟ THE RIGHT HONOURABLE JOHN, LORD CAMPBELL. &c. &c. &c. MY LORD, It is not your eminence as a great lawyer, nor your distinction as a leading member of our highest Legislative Assembly, that moves me to dedicate the following Treatise to your Lordship :-I inscribe it to the Author of the "Lives of the Chancellors." I have the honour to be, MY LORD, Your Lordship's very faithful and obliged Servant, JOHN FRASER MACQUEEN. CORRIGENDA. Page 47, the case mentioned as decided by Lord Keeper North was Palmer v. Trevor, 1 Vern. 261. Page 162, omit the word "matured" in the third line from the top. PREFACE. I HAVE endeavoured to make this work useful, clear, and short. The subject is distributed according to the order of time; and the simpler cases are made to introduce those which are more complex. My plan is to treat first of GENERAL RULES, and then of SPECIAL STIPULATIONS. Questions of Conveyancing I touch upon but lightly, because these are more ably dealt with by writers whose books are necessarily in every hand. For a similar reason I am silent, or nearly so, as to pleading. Keeping, however, within the limits of a strict adherence to my subject, the relation of husband and wife is one peculiarly fertile in legal difficulties, and certainly not barren of judicial conflict. Merely to collect the cases would have been easy. But I have not always thought myself at liberty to give decisions without commentary. * To Mr. Bethell, Q.C., for valuable advice and important suggestions my sincere thanks are due. The continued revision of Mr. Russell, Q.C., confers an obligation upon my readers, as well as upon myself; and furnishes another proof of the fact that those who have most to do contrive often to have the most leisure. In the Appendix, No. I., there is a practical Summary of proceedings on "Alienations by Married Women," which, I hope, will prove useful (particularly to solicitors), not only in England, but in Scotland and Ireland, as well as abroad; wherever, in short, married women having English deeds to execute, may happen to reside. It is the first effort yet made to methodise and elucidate the system * The remarks of a legal writer may be of use in practice. He has his mind full of the subject. All the authorities have been reviewed by him. He finds a case which, in the language of the Courts "stands alone." By a word or two he may prevent it from misleading. He puts readers on their inquiry, and, by inducing an exercise of thought, fixes legal principles in the reason as well as in the memory. |