THE SOLICITORS' LAW STATIONERY SOCIETY, LTD., 104-107 FETTER LANE, E.C.4, and Branches. 1925. (Printed in England.) PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. IN submitting to the favourable consideration of the legal profession this new edition of Mews' Digest, the Editors desire to draw attention to some of its more salient features and advantages. The main object of the work is to place before the reader a miniature library of all the reports, and it is sought to accomplish this object by giving the head-note, that is, the pith and substance, of every decision that can be of any practical use to the lawyer. The cases included in the work are not only all modern English decisions and a large number of Scots and Irish cases, but also a large selection of older cases going back in many instances to very early times where such cases are at all likely to be useful. No attempt has been made to include every case that has ever been reported, whether good, bad or indifferent, but every endeavour has been made to avoid the omission of any case that can be of service to the practitioner. It will be noticed that a considerable number of cases rendered obsolete by legislation or otherwise have been retained in the present edition, the principal reason for their retention being that in some cases it is important to ascertain the state of the law before the legislative changes took place, and this is especially the case where that state of law is still in force in some parts of the British Empire. Moreover, in some instances the present state of the law can only be rightly understood by tracing its evolution through a series of superseded decisions. The scheme of arrangement and the main divisions of the subject-matter, with which those who consult VOL. I. iii a |