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In which are contained many CASES never before
published; extracted from the NOTES of a
very Eminent BARRISTER deceased: The
whole digested in a regular Order.

By EDMUND BOTT, Efq. BARRISTER at LAW of the
INNER TEMPLE.

TO WHICH ARE PREFIXED,

EXTRACTS from the STATUTES
concerning the Poo R.

The Second EDITION, with confiderable Additions.

LONDON:

Printed by W. STRAHAN and M. WOODFALL; Law-Printers to
the King's moft Excellent Majefty;

For P. URIEL in Inner Temple-Lane, and W. GRIFFIN, in
Catharine Street, Strand. 1773.

BODLEIAN

FFB63

LIBRARY

ADVERTISEMENT

prefixed to the first Edition.

IT

T may not be improper to give fome account of the reafons for undertaking the following compilation, and the manner in which it has been executed. The number of collections already published might indeed render any publication of this nature ufelefs; but the want of method and accuracy, evident, in a greater or lefs degree, in all of them, may preclude any further apology for making this collection. Add to this, that the number of years elapfed fince the publication of the latest of them, caufes an unvoidable infufficiency in them. A great number of very nice and important questions upon the poor laws have been lately determined by the court of King's Bench. Of those Mr. Burrow has favoured the world with an excellent Report; but from the fize of that collection, it is rendered two expenfive for the purchase of parish officers, and inconvenient for gentlemen who attend at the feffions. Doctor Burn deferves the highest refpect for his Juftice of Peace; but as only the laft edition of that excellent work, is enriched by extracts from Mr. Burrow's Report, all the former editions fall fhort of that perfection which their ingenious Author would now have been able to beftow upon them.

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them. Doctor Burn's Juftice of Peace contains likewife information upon a great number of matters which are not the objects of the jurifdiction of the quarter feffions, and of the attention of parish officers, for whose use this prefent compilation is more particularly intended. The fame obfervations likewife may be applied to my Lord Ward's Country Juftice. I flatter my felf therefore, that this compilation will correct the errors, fupply the defects, and, as far as it extends, more fully affift the practitioner than any of the former collections, Reports only of unexceptionable authority have been confulted in forming this compilation, which has likewife been improved by a great number of extracts from a manufcript collection of cafes by the late John Ford, Efq; The cafes marked MSS. in the following fheets are all of them taken from that manufcript. The compiler has very féldom hazarded any obfervations. of his own, nor ventured to make any alteration in the style of the reporters, however uncouth it might appear to him. He has diftributed under their proper heads, fome notes of cafes which have been determined in the Court of King's Bench fince the publication of Mr. Burrow's Cafes of Settlements. Whether the order in which the cafes are diftributed might not be changed for a better, the compiler is in fome doubt; yet he hopes that the prefent order is not materially improper. But while he has endeavoured to correct the deficiencies, or inaccuracies of others, he is fenfible, that he has much indulgence to afk for his own. Many of thefe are owing to the intricacy of the fubject, and ftill more to the compiler's frequent ab

fence

fence from the prefs. He flatters himself how ever, upon the whole, that the utility of this undertaking will compenfate for its defect, and that the humility of his attempt may reprefs the severity of cenfure.

E. B.

Advertisement concerning this fecond Edition.

T

HE additional cafes which are inferted

in this edition, are partly taken from a manuscript, for the use of which I am obliged to Mr. Serjeant Fofter. They are distinguished by this mark, MSS. 2. The rest of the additional cafes, are reports of determinations made by the Court of King's Bench, fince the publication of the first edition of this collection, in 1771. The number of cafes is increased by near a hundred, from both these fources. Those cafes, which in the first edition were thrown into the appendix, are now diftributed under their proper heads in the body of the work. The Index to the principal matters is very much enlarged, and there is an Index fubjoined to the extract from the ftatutes.

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