ON THE LAW OF BILLS OF EXCHANGE, PROMISSORY NOTES, BANK-NOTES AND CHEQUES. BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR JOHN BARNARD BYLES, LATE ONE OF THE JUDGES OF HER MAJESTY'S COURT OF COMMON PLEAS. THE EIGHTEENTH EDITION. WITH COLONIAL NOTES. BY WALTER J. BARNARD BYLES. OF THE INNER TEMPLE, AND A. W. BAKER WELFORD, OF LINCOLN'S INN, BARRISTERS-AT-LAW. VIGILANTIBUS NON DORMIENTIBUS JURA SUBVENIUNT, LONDON: SWEET & MAXWELL, LIMITED, 1923. (Printed in England.) PREFACE TO THE EIGHTEENTH EDITION. THE most important decision since the date of the last edition (1911) is that of the London Joint Stock Bank v. MacMillan (see p. 25), where the House of Lords upheld the much criticised decision of Young v. Grote, and thereby confirmed the correctness of the view expressed by the editors of the last edition. The present editors have adhered to the arrangement introduced for the first time by the editors of the previous edition whereby the sections of the Act of 1882 were set out verbatim in the text, an innovation which has met with general approval. In order to carry out this alteration, recourse was had to a certain amount of elimination; this elimination was not however complete, and the present editors have accordingly taken the opportunity for a further revision. The passages which have been omitted or curtailed are those relating to principles of law which are not peculiar to bills, notes or cheques, but are of general application. Such passages for the most part, so far as the editors have been able to trace them, appear to have been added from time to time by the editors of the various editions, and do not emanate from the author himself. Owing to the greatly increased cost of production since the date of the last edition it has been necessary to restrict the size of the book and the editors regret that, for this reason, they have been compelled to omit the preface to the first edition, hitherto included in all subsequent editions. This omission does not impair the usefulness of the work, as the original preface can now only be regarded as of historical interest. The space which has been saved by the various omissions has been largely devoted to a consideration of the Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and South African statutes which correspond to and for the most part reproduce the English Act of 1882. The editors have not, however, attempted to give a full exposition of these statutes or to deal exhaustively with Dominion cases. They have contented themselves with drawing attention to the most striking points of difference as compared with the English Act, and, as regards the cases, have confined themselves to citing such cases as deal directly with specific provisions of the statutes, the construction placed thereon not being always identical with that taken by the English courts. Further they have included such Dominion. cases as directly follow or distinguish English cases, subject to the limitation that no attempt has been made to cite cases anterior in date to the passing of the respective statutes. It is hoped that this part of the work will supplement the references to foreign, as distinguished from Dominion, Law first introduced in the last edition and thus increase the usefulness of the book. As far as the Editors have been able to ascertain, no progress has yet been made in foreign countries as regards the "Uniform Regulation" (Règlement Uniforme) which was adopted by the Hague International Conferences of 1910 and 1912, and is intended as an international law relating to bills of exchange and promissory notes. Thirty-one countries (England and the United States not however included), among whom were France, Belgium, Italy, Austria, Germany, Holland, Sweden, The Argentine Republic, Brazil, etc., originally agreed to adopt the law in their respective countries, but nothing further appears to have been done in the matter as regards any of the countries concerned. WALTER J. BARNARD BYLES. A. W. BAKER WELFORD. Temple, April, 1923. |