Work is enriched by extracts from MR. BURROW'S Reports, all the former editions fall fhort of that perfection which their ingenious Author would now have been able to bestow upon them. DR. BURN'S "Justice of Peace" contains likewife information upon a great number of matters which are not the objects of the jurifdiction of the Quarter Seffions, and of the attention of Parish-officers, for whofe ufe this present Compilation is more particularly intended. The fame obfervation likewife may be applied to MY LORD WARD'S "Country Justice." I flatter myself, 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 anexceptionable authority have been confulted in forming this Compilation; which has likewise 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 theets are all of them taken from that Manufcript.

THE Compiler has very feldom hazarded any obfervations of his own, nor ventured to make any alterations in the ftyle 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

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 ask for his own. Many of these are owing to the intricacy of the fubject, and still more to the Compiler's frequent abfence from the Prefs. He flatters himself, however, upon the whole, that the utility of this undertaking will compenfate for its defects, and that the humility of his attempt may reprefs the feverity of cenfure.

ADVERTISEMENT

CONCERNING THE

SECOND EDITION.

HE additional Cafes which are inferted in this

TH

Edition are partly taken from a Manuscript, for the ufe of which I am obliged to MR. SERJEANT FOSTER. They are distinguished by this mark, MSS. 2. The reft 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 thefe fources. Thofe 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 Extracts from the Statutes.

EDMUND BOTT.