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PREFACE.

IN offering to the Profession and the Public a new work

on the Law of Partnership, the Author is aware that he is liable to the charge of presumption; trespassing, as he does, upon ground which has been long and successfully occupied. But the great importance of the subject will, he trusts, be a partial, if not a complete, apology for his conduct. The principles which are imperfectly developed in the following pages, afford a field for the continual exercise of the most distinguished talents, in our Courts both of law and equity. A Treatise, therefore, which shall have the sole merit of containing the most recent decisions on questions of Partnership, may possibly meet with the approbation of practical men.

WHETHER the present work possesses any other claim to general attention than that which has just been alluded to, is a question which the reader alone will be able to determine. On the one hand, the Author has endeavoured to arrange and abbreviate the numerous and complicated cases which he has met with in the course of his labours, so as to relieve the student of some portion of his toil. On the other hand, he has seldom been satisfied with the mere announcement of general principles,

but has stated, in some degree of detail, for the convenience of the practitioner, the facts of each important

case.

ONE objection to the work may here be anticipated. The Author fears that he has, in some instances, unnecessarily multiplied illustrations of the same proposition; and that the learned but impatient reader may occasionally be tempted to exclaim-" Utitur in re non dubiá testibus non necessariis." Indulgence, however, will perhaps be extended to a sincere desire of giving every information on the subject, and a fear of stating too much on self-authority.

THE Treatise contains five Books. The first relates to the Constitution of the Contract of Partnership; the second, to the Rights of Partners inter se; the third, to the Relative Rights of Partners and Third Persons; the fourth, to the Bankruptcy of Partners; and the fifth, to Particular Partnerships. For a more particular knowledge of the various divisions of the work, the reader is referred to the Table of Contents.

THE Author will not conclude these observations without thanking his numerous friends for the kind and valuable assistance which they have afforded him in the course of the undertaking.

LINCOLN'S INN, 20th June, 1832.

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