LAW-PRINTER TO THE KING'S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY; 1803. ΤΟ THE HONOURABLE SIR SOULDEN LAWRENCE, KNIGHT, ONE OF THE JUSTICES OF HIS MAJESTY's COURT OF KING's BENCH, THIS TREATISE IS, WITH GREAT RESPECT AND ESTEEM, DEDICATED BY HIS MUCH OBLIGED. AND VERY FAITHFUL HUMBLE SERVANT, EDWARD HYDE EAST. A 2 PREFACE. I SHOULD have confidered it an unbecoming presumption, as well as an unneceffary labour, had I ventured, without additional materials, on a new arrangement and difcuffion of the fubject of these volumes, already fo ably and authoritatively treated of by Lord C. J. Hale and Mr. Serjt. Hawkins. But it is now near ninety years* fince the laft of those authors published his valuable work, and the accumulation of new matter, both by ftatutes and adjudged cafes, is become fo great, that a revision of this most interesting branch of our law would, I thought, be an acceptable offering to the members of my profeffion, however far the execution of it might fall fhort in point of ability of those models which they have been accuftomed to contemplate. It may be faid, that much has already been done towards the completion of what I have proposed by the excellent difcourfes of Mr. Juftice Fofter, by the notes which have from time to time been added to the feveral editions of Serjt. Hawkins's work, and by a collection of cafes on the crown law published within a few years paft by Mr. Leach. With respect to the first of these, it is greatly to be lamented, from the specimen which that learned judge has given of his talent in this fpecies of writing, that he did not take a more general view of the criminal law, which he seems at one time to have meditated. Had he extended the fame attention to other parts of The first edition was printed in 1716. |