A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON PLEADING, IN ASSUMPSIT. BY EDWARD LAWES, Esq. OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER AT LAW. LONDON: PRINTED FOR W. REED, LAW-BOOKSELLER, 1810. TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE EDWARD LORD ELLENBOROUGH, LORD CHIEF JUSTICE OF ENGLAND, &c. &c. &c. MY LORD, I am amply rewarded for my labors, by your Lordship's kind permission to dedicate them to such high and distinguished authority. My only anxiety is that the Work may be found not altogether unworthy of your Lordship's favor. I remain, my Lord, With the greatest possible respect, Your Lordship's most obedient, and very faithful servant, EDWARD LAWES Temple, July 18th, 1810. PREFACE. IT is now many years since the author first conceived the idea of composing a practical work upon the subject of pleading. His original plan was to investigate the several authorities in the books on that subject, with reference to the different allegations as they occurred in well settled precedents, of declarations and pleadings in the different actions in common use, that is, those precedents which state the facts in their natural order of time and circumstance. In the prosecution of this design, it appeared to him that the subject admitted of a theoretical, as well as a practical consideration; and that these two different modes of considering it could not be kept too distinct. With this impression he was led, at an early period of his professional life, to compose the small elementary tract he published in 1806. In that tract, he has confined himself to a theoretical outline of the science, and endeavoured to distinguish and explain the That pleading is, properly, a science; see 2 Wynne's Eunomus, 67 to 76. 10 East. 61. and 3 B. & P. 461. |