ΤΟ

SIR NICOLAS CONYNGHAM TINDAL,

HIS MAJESTY'S SOLICITOR GENERAL,

THIS WORK IS INSCRIBED,

AS AN HUMBLE BUT SINCERE TRIBUTE

OF ESTEEM AND ADMIRATION

FOR THOSE LEGAL TALENTS, AND THOSE PRIVATE VIRTUES,

WHICH HAVE GAINED HIM THE UNIVERSAL RESPECT

OF HIS PROFESSION,

AND HAVE DESERVEDLY RAISED HIM TO

THE EMINENT STATION HE OCCUPIES

AT THE ENGLISH BAR.

PREFACE.

SOME apology may be thought due to the profession, in thus offering to their notice a treatise on an important branch of our jurisprudence, which has lately been so ably discussed by Mr. Eden, and one, too, which (as the framer of the two last statutes relating to bankruptcy) he was so peculiarly well qualified to elucidate. The only excuse that can be made for this presumption is, that great part of the following work was composed before Mr. Eden even announced his intention to publish on bankruptcy; the Author having shortly after the passing of the 5 G. 4. c. 98. (which repealed all the former bankrupt laws) begun to prepare materials for a new treatise on a subject, which he thought the profession would require from some one pen or other. His work was nearly half completed when the 6 G. 4. c. 16. unexpectedly repealed the whole of the preceding statute; and this, together with Mr. Eden's announcement of his book, induced the Author for some time to give up his project in despair. Upon consideration, however, it occurred to him, that the field, although pre-occupied, was

not perhaps entirely engrossed; and that there might still be some room left for a common lawyer to glean a few matters useful to the profession, upon a subject involving so many points of commercial law, which had been previously discussed only by gentlemen practising in the Courts of Equity.

The Author is almost ashamed to acknowledge the labour and anxiety it has cost him in his endeavours to justify this attempt, notwithstanding the great assistance he has derived from all those who have trod the path before him; more especially from the works of Mr. Cooke and Mr. Eden, and (though last, not least) from those of his lamented friend, the late Sir William Evans; whose life, if it had been some time longer spared, would have been cheered in its decline by the reflection, that the recent improvements in the bankrupt law have principally sprung from the very able and original suggestions contained in his notes on the former statutes, and in his letter to Sir Samuel Romilly on the necessity of their revision.

In the construction of the following treatise, the Author has collected the law appertaining to the duties of the Solicitor, and the important question of Costs, into distinct chapters; conceiving that the numerous decisions which have accumulated on each of these subjects, since the first publication of works on bankruptcy, would render such an arrangement more convenient for reference, than

leaving those subjects scattered through different portions of the work. The same plan has been adopted with respect to the functions of the Messenger; who, though a less important officer than the solicitor, is one, nevertheless, whose duties draw him into more immediate contact with the property and personal liberty of the bankrupt, and who incurs a heavy responsibility when he oversteps or neglects those duties.

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Great pains have been taken in the framing of a copious Index, without which the very best law book, however instructive to the student, becomes wholly useless in the hurry of reference to the practitioner; and the value of which can only be appreciated by him, who is required on the instant to put his finger on the very page for an authority, to support, or to refute, an objection suddenly raised in court.

With respect to the practical part of the work, the Author cannot omit this opportunity of acknowledging the kind assistance rendered him by John Pensam, Esq., the Secretary of Bankrupts.

The first part of this treatise has swelled to a more bulky volume than the Author contemplated when he began his labours; but if he had pursued the plan of Mr. Cooke, and given the judgments pronounced in the different cases at full length, it would not have been contained in three times its