Excerpt from The Elements of Mercantile Law

The title of this work indicates its purpose and character, but as they are in some respects peculiar, a few remarks respecting them may make the volume more useful.

When I accepted, seven years ago, the office of Dane Professor in the Law School of Harvard University, it was my expectation that my official duties would leave me some leisure which I could usefully employ in making a series of textbooks on Commercial Law. I had for many years been much employed in examining questions belonging to that department of the law, and had formed the opinion that text-books might be made better suited to the wants of the profession than those we had. Their general merit, and the high excellence of some of them I knew, but it seemed to me that they had faults which might be avoided, and deficiencies which might be supplied. The necessary basis for such a series was a work on the Law of Contracts generally. This I have made, and I may perhaps be permitted to say, that the reception it has met with, while it does not blind me to its deficiencies, encourages me to believe that further labors of the same character would not be useless or unacceptable to my professional brethren. And it is my purpose and hope to execute fully my original plan.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.