Supreme Court of Judicature Acts 1873 & 1875: WITH THE RULES, ORDERS, AND COSTS THEREUNDER: EDITED WITH COPIOUS NOTES, REFERENCES, AND A VERY FULL INDEX, AND FORMING A complete Book of Practice under the above Acts. BY WILLIAM DOWNES GRIFFITH, OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW; Late Her Majesty's Attorney-General for the Colony of the Cape of Good Hope; PREFACE. On my return to practice at the English bar, in November, 1873, after an absence of nearly eight years-having been appointed in December, 1865, as Attorney-General at the Cape of Good Hope-I sought for some occupation by which I could usefully occupy my time and attention while waiting for the slow and painful accretion anew of the practice which had been so entirely dissipated by my long absence. As at that time the Supreme Court of Judicature Act of 1873 had just been passed, it offered an immediate subject such as I had been seeking for. I proceeded to study the Act closely, and soon found that there was no room, or very little, for originality in a work on the subject which should be useful to the body of practising lawyers, but that any book of such a character must, to be of value, sink the original and endeavour to give, as concisely as might conveniently be, but at the same time as fully as to be useful, all the law as at present settled on those parts of the new practice of which there are many identical with or very closely modelled upon the practice of former times, and, what was perhaps more essential but at least equally important, should specially note those points where, having up to the point pursued a similar course to that of the old practice, the new should suddenly diverge from it, though often only in a slight degree. To effect this, it was of course necessary largely to have recourse to the works which have been already published, and have established their character, and I have, in this respect, drawn, I am free to confess, very considerably from the third edition of "Lush's Practice," edited by Mr. Dixon, and from the fourth edition of Mr. Morgan's "Chancery Acts and Orders," besides having often had recourse to the last edition of "Daniel's Chancery Practice," and occasionally to White and Tudor's "Leading Cases in Equity," as well as to the reported cases decided since the publication of these works. With this assistance, I trust I have collected nearly all the practice which can be of assistance in throwing light on what is to be the reading of the new law, and for what remains untouched by it, the old books will still be as useful as ever. I have given great pains to the index of the book, which, to any work of the kind, is perhaps as important as the book itself, and by every means of cross-reference, have endeavoured to make it as great an assistance to the practitioner as it can be made, and if I have at all succeeded in doing what I intended, I have no doubt of receiving, inwardly at least, some thanks and good wishes from my fellows at the bar. I trust they may be satisfied with what I have done, which would have been better had I been able to make it so, and with all deference to their better judgments upon its merits, I submit my labours. WILLIAM DOWNES GRIFFITH. 6, OLD BUILDINGS, LINCOLN'S INN, October, 1875. V. Officers and Offices, Sec. 77 to 87 VI. Jurisdiction of Inferior Courts, Sec. 88 to 91 VII. Miscellaneous Provisions, Sec. 92 to 100. 98 97 |