AND LAW MAGAZINE FROM APRIL 1838 TO JANUARY 1843: DURING WHICH PERIOD IT WAS CONDUCTED AND PRINCIPALLY EDITED BY LUTHER S. CUSHING. IN TEN VOLUMES. VOL. I. Containing Numbers 37 and 38, for April and July 1838, and being Volume XIX. of the entire Collection. BOSTON: CHARLES C. LITTLE AND JAMES BROWN. MDCCCXLIII. PUBLISHERS' ADVERTISEMENT. THE publication of the American Jurist and Law Magazine was commenced at Boston, in the month of January, 1829, and has since been regularly continued, at the rate of two volumes or four numbers a year, until the beginning of the year 1843, when it was brought to a close with the twenty-eighth volume. During this period, the work has been under the direction of several different editors, and has met with various success, but has never been a source of profit to its proprietors, or of reasonable compensation to its editors and contributors. In the spring of the year 1838, the present publishers undertook to carry on the work, under the editorial supervision of Messrs. CHARLES SUMNer, Luther S. CUSHING, and GEORGE S. HILLARD, three gentlemen of the bar in Boston, who had then been for some time employed as its editors; and, for the purpose of giving the work a fresh impulse, the April number for that year was printed with a new type, and issued in a new and improved style of typography. The several subjects, also, which had usually formed the matter of the work, were arranged in a more definite and systematic order. This number was commenced with an article, " on the plan and objects of the American Jurist and Law Magazine," in which the plan of the work, as it was then established, was set forth and explained at length, and the members of the legal profession were earnestly requested to come forward and assist in its support, both with their subscriptions and their writings. With the April number, therefore, for the year 1838, a new series of the work was in fact commenced, though it did not receive that name, and was considered in no other light than as a continuation of the original publication. The publishers flattered themselves, that these attempts, on their part, to improve the character and appearance of the work, and to increase its utility and value to the profession, would be followed by a corresponding increase of public favor and patronage. But in this they have been disappointed; they have scarcely been able, with all the exertions they have made, to make the proceeds of the work defray its expenses, without affording them any profit, or their editors and contributors any adequate compensation. In this way they have gone on, hoping for better success and encouragement, for five years; during which time, they have published ten volumes of the work, in the new style and on the improved plan, to which allusion has been made. They believe they have thus made a fair (certainly not a hasty) trial of the experiment of a quarterly law periodical, and have satisfied themselves that the profession do not want, and consequently will not adequately support such a work. Having come to this conclusion, upon what seem to them to be good and sufficient grounds, they have taken the only wise course, and have accordingly brought the work to a close. |