PREFACE.

MY DEAR COUSINS,

WHEN I concluded last year my series of letters to you, showing "How WE ARE GOVERNED,” it occurred to me that I might give you some further information touching the working of our law that might be useful. The present work is the result of my labours in that behalf.

In the following pages, I have sketched out some of the most important "RIGHTS AND WRONGS" that a British subject, whether man or woman, may acquire or commit in the ordinary relationships of life.

It would require not one book, but a complete library, to contain an account of every right that can possibly be claimed, and every wrong that could possibly be done, under all combinations of circumstances. It would also be impossible for me to compress within a readable volume, the intricate obligations of the trading and commercial world. I shall, therefore, attempt to trace our duties and liabilities, only so far as they

attach to our private life and the every-day transactions which, from our birth to the disposal of our worldly goods in anticipation of the grave, attend us through our pilgrimage.

I do not offer this volume to you as a law-book—as such it has no pretensions whatever. It is intended. to assist you in avoiding litigation, not to give you help when engaged in it.

I shall not offer any dicta of my own, but shall compile my text from the "Statutes at Large," and the reported decisions of our judges, quoting, when occasion offers, from the works of learned commentators, who are much more worthy to be read than I am.

Thus, I hope to give you, in an untechnical and familiar manner, a sketch of your duty towards your neighbour, as defined by the law of the land we live in.

A. F.

Dec. 1st, 1859.