A TREATISE ON THE LAW OF EVIDENCE, AS ADMINISTERED IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND; WITH ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE AMERICAN AND OTHER FOREIGN LAWS. FIFTH EDITION. BY JOHN PITT TAYLOR, Esq., JUDGE OF THE COUNTY COURTS FOR LAMBETH, GREENWICH, AND WOOLWICH. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. Longum iter est per præcepta, Breve et efficax per exempla.-SENECA. LONDON: WILLIAM MAXWELL & SON, 29, FLEET STREET, HODGES, SMITH, & Co., DUBLIN ; BELL & BRADFUTE, EDINBURGH. ; PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION. In passing the present Edition of my Treatise through the press, I have, with a feeling akin to parental solicitude, anxiously revised, for the fifth time, both the text and the notes. All the really important decisions on the Law of Evidence, which have been pronounced during the last four years, whether in England or in Ireland, will be found noticed in their proper places; and at least two hundred separate enactments, the prolific fruit of our "rapid and restless Legislation" for the same period, have been embodied in the work. I have also carefully expunged every passage in the former Edition, which, owing to the changes in the law, has become a "blind guide" to the student. My warmest thanks are due to Mr. Robert Romer, of No. 4, New Square, Lincoln's Inn, for the valuable aid he has afforded me in re-paging and revising the Indexes. To this most irksome task he has applied, in no scant measure, |