PREFACE. vii
in some instances have been inadvertently repeated. Notwithstanding considerable care has been used to make this volume accurate, upon a review, some few omissions of Titles have been discovered, and some erroneous dates, which, from the nature of the undertaking, it was hardly possible in a first edition to avoid. It will be my constant effort to make such corrections and additions as a further study of the subject may reveal and require, and I earnestly request that Gentlemen into whose hands the work may chance to come, will have the kindness to communicate to me through my publishers all mistakes and omitted Titles or Notes, which may be noticed, in order that they may be used in a future edition, provided the present should be sufficiently approved of, to require another. It was my intention to have inserted an Introduction explanatory of the judicial adoption and authority of Foreign works in our Courts, with some account of the Legislation upon the subject, and the authority of the Federal Court and State Reports in each other's tribunals, but the volume has already attained a size beyond the original estimate, and I do not feel at liberty to increase its expense by additional matter. "This is a vessel I confess ill and weakly built, yet doth it adventure into the vast Ocean of your censures; Gentlemen, who are Antiquarians, Lawyers, and Historians."
J. G. M.
Feb. 13th, 1847.
