[DEDICATION TO THE FIRST EDITION.] ΤΟ SIR THOMAS WILDE, M. P. ONE OF HER MAJESTY'S SERJEANTS-AT-LAW, AND LATE HER MAJESTY'S ATTORNEY-GENERAL, THIS WORK IS INSCRIBED, IN HIGH ADMIRATION OF HIS Distinguished Talents, and Constitutional and Legal Learning : IN WARM ESTEEM OF HIS PRIVATE VIRTUES: AND IN GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF THE MANY ADVANTAGES OBTAINED THROUGH HIS KINDNESS DURING THE PERIOD OF PROBATION AS A STUDENT, BY THE AUTHOR. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE following pages are presented to the Profession with a full consciousness of there being already several most able and valuable works relating to the Criminal Law, which have most deservedly obtained their confidence and approbation; and that this fact calls for some explanation, why any further work should be submitted to their attention. The peculiar arrangement of this work is alone relied upon, to supply such explanation, as affording, it is hoped, greater facilities for reference to the various offences, and the points of Law arising under each, than have been supplied by any previous volume; the combination of the alphabetical and tabular arrangements, serving to direct the eye at once to the subject of which it is in search. The limited object of this compilation also tends to distinguish it from other works; as not including any treatise on pleading, evidence, and practice generally, but only such matter in connexion with these subjects as the decided cases, and the doctrines of text writers, noticed under each offence, may embrace, and as it may be useful to remind the practitioner of, in the course of actual business; directing at the same time to the sources of more elaborate information. The column headed " "9 OBSERVATIONS includes a condensed digest of the decided cases: under many of the more important offences, these were found too numerous to notice in the text, without inconveniently interfering with the tabular arrangements; in such instances, therefore, they are collected in a note, under classified heads, to each of which reference is made, from the text. The cases are brought down to the present time; and through the kindness of the learned editors, the Addenda to the work includes several cases contained in a number of Messrs. Carrington and Marshman's Reports, on the eve of publication. The earlier sheets of the work had passed through the press, at the time when alterations regarding criminal punishments were vi PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. proposed in the last Session of Parliament; any further progress was therefore suspended, that these might be incorporated, which has been accordingly done. This fact will explain why a few cases are placed in the ADDENDA, which would otherwise have been introduced under their appropriate heads. Although the arrangement of the work is intended, and it is hoped successfully, as it regards the greater number of objects for which it may be referred to, to prevent the necessity of previous reference to an index; yet, as under some general heads, as Forgery, Larceny, etc., the specific offences included are numerous, and spread over many pages, a Table of Contents is prefixed, directing to the page at which each offence under the same general title is noticed. An Index to the points of law arising under each offence, when these could not be succinctly noticed in the column headed "OBSERVATIONS," will always be found either in that column or the column headed "EVIDENCE." The mode of reference therefore to any point of law, will in all cases be by a reference to the offence under which it arises. A Table of the Cases cited, and of the statutes referred to, is prefixed. The work is thus submitted to the candour of the Profession, with no other pretension than as collecting from the Statute Book, the text writers, and decided cases, the law, as it relates to indictable offences. The labour of such a task has been greatly diminished by those who have preceded the Author in the pursuit of the same object; and he claims for himself the only merit of having devoted most laborious care, to secure entire accuracy, as the most important object to be regarded. 3, SERJEANTS'-INN, TEMPLE, February, 21, 1842. B. BOOTHBY. |