Handon. M 1897 PRINCIPLES OF THE ENGLISH LAW OF CONTRACT AND OF AGENCY IN ITS RELATION TO CONTRACT ANSON STANFORD LAW LIBRARY London HENRY FROWDE AND STEVENS AND SONS, LIMITED DOMENINA New York 66 FIFTH AVENUE PRINCIPLES OF THE ENGLISH LAW OF CONTRACT AND OF AGENCY IN ITS RELATION TO CONTRACT BY SIR WILLIAM R. ANSON, BART., D.C.L. OF THE INNER TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW WARDEN OF ALL SOULS COLLEGE, OXFORD Eighth Edition Orford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS LONDON: HENRY FROWDE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, AMEN CORNER, E.C. AND STEVENS & SONS, LIMITED 119 & 120 CHANCERY LANE 1895 PREFACE TO THE SIXTH EDITION WHEN the subject of Contract was first introduced into the School of Jurisprudence at Oxford, in the year 1877. teachers of Law had to consider the books which their pupils might best be directed to read. Some works on the subject of acknowledged value to the practising lawyer were hardly suitable for beginners, and the choice seemed to lie between the works of Mr. Leake, Sir Frederick Pollock, and the late Mr. Smith. Of these, Mr. Smith alone wrote expressly for students, and I had, as a student, read his book with interest and advantage. But I thought that it left room for an elementary treatise worked out upon different lines. Neither Sir Frederick Pollock nor Mr. Leake wrote for beginners, and I feared lest the mass of statement and illustration which their books contain, ordered and luminous though it be, might tend to oppress and dishearten the student entering upon a course of reading for the School of Law. Being at that time the only public teacher of English Law in the University, I had some practical acquaintance with the sort of difficulties which beset the learner, and I endeavoured to supply the want which I have described. In working out the plan of my book I necessarily studied the modes of treatment adopted by these two writers, and I became aware that they are based on two totally different principles. Mr. Leake treats the contract as a subject of |