SELECT ESSAYS IN ANGLO-AMERICAN LEGAL HISTORY BY VARIOUS AUTHORS COMPILED AND EDITED BY A COMMITTEE OF THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN LAW SCHOOLS IN THREE VOLUMES VOLUME III BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1909 PREFACE WIT ITH the present Volume ends this collection of essays, and the editors finish their task. How shall we prologuise, how shall we perorate, Suffice it, in taking leave, to express the hope that these volumes have in perusal been as interesting to their readers as they were in preparation to their editors. Carlyle, discoursing on History, reminds us that "whereas of old the charm of History lay chiefly in gratifying our common appetite for the wonderful, for the unknown, and her office was but as that of Minstrel and Story-teller, she has now farther become a Schoolmistress, and professes to instruct in gratifying." That these essays may gratify while instructing is the wish of the editors. It is to them a special satisfaction, in this third Volume, to have succeeded in the endeavor (announced in the preface to the second Volume) to include an essay worthily representative of French scholarship in the field of English law that of Professor Robert Caillemer, of the University of Grenoble. In this Volume, the topics are all of concrete and vivid interest. Several of them trace principles still in process of growth. Research has in some important respects revealed different results to different scholars working on the same materials. Hence occasionally the added interest, for the student, of reconciling the conflicting beliefs, or of choosing between them. For those who must decline either alternative, there remains the consolation proffered six centuries ago by the seer of Italy, "To doubt is not less grateful than to know." The editors, in thus assembling these seventy-six essays, may be granted leave (without desiring to magnify their office) humbly to take pleasure in the thought that at least and at last something has been finished which needed to be done, while the profession is awaiting the accomplishment of greater and more difficult tasks in the vast region of AngloAmerican legal history. THE EDITORS. July 1, 1909. |