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PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

IN 1836 Mr. John William Smith, the learned editor of the "Leading Cases," wrote his "Elementary View of the Proceedings in an Action-atLaw." The book was little more than a tract, containing only 174 pages and not divided into chapters. Since then it has gone through eleven editions, and has been considerably increased in bulk by the additions which successive legal changes required. The organic reconstruction of the law of actions effected by the Judicature Acts has made a fresh arrangement of the subject necessary, and notwithstanding that Chancery, Probate and Admiralty actions are now brought within the scope of the volume, it has been found possible, by reason of the greater uniformity of the new procedure, to reduce considerably the size of the present book as compared with the Eleventh Edition of " Smith's Action-at-Law."

The writer's object has been to reproduce so much of Mr. Smith's and his editors' work as is still applicable to the subject; to supplement it with his own reading of the new law, and to arrange the whole in as simple and intelligible a form as possible. The chronological order of the

events in an action has, in the main, been strictly followed, except in such subjects as "Summary Proceedings," in which it became necessary to abandon the order of time for the purpose of grouping. The "Selected Forms" have been arranged with the view of enabling the reader to realise, by means of documentary samples, the general course of an action in the Supreme Court. The Rules of the Supreme Court as amended by the Judges from time to time have been given at the end of the book, as the student cannot too soon familiarise himself with what is in fact the code of procedure in an action. The arrangement of the body of the book is not the same as that of the Rules, and where both the original and reprinted matter cover the same ground the writer has taken pains to use his own language rather than that of the Rules, so that the reader may be assisted by a variety both of form and expression to grasp something more than the mere words of the subject.

1, KING'S BENCH WALK,

July, 1876.

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