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less useful in suggesting to the practitioner the advantage of securing expressly what is often more loosely left to implication. The number of authorities from other States and from the Federal courts, which I have cited, particularly in regard to Provisional Remedies, the Means of Evidence, the Manner of Trial and the Form of Judgment, will indicate the adaptation of the work to assist Practice in all the courts of the country.

It will be seen that I have given special attention to elucidating what is still called Equity Practice. The Codes, while pruning away the redundancies and verbiage of the old chancery forms, have sanctioned them, in substance, to a far greater extent than many young practitioners suppose; and these Forms now constitute remedies of singular value and efficiency; although the proper adaptation of them to the modern methods is not easily learned.

The practitioner will find the usefulness of these volumes enhanced if he will notice at the outset the light thrown by systematic analysis and practical arrangement on some proceedings which, as presented in the statutes and in text books, are apt to be perplexing. For instance, the apparent confusion of authorities on proceedings to punish for contempt, nearly disappears when we trace separately the four distinct remedies by summary commitment, by motion in the cause, by attachment to bring in, or by order to act or show cause, etc. (see p. 1524), distinctions which practitioners can appreciate better perhaps than commentators. So the practice as to Abatement and Revival of Actions, and as to Changes of Parties, is hardly to be understood unless we bear in mind the distinctions exhibited in Chapter XI, between the case of a party whose adversary has died or assigned, etc., and who desires to bring the representatives in, and a case where the attorney whose client dies or assigns, etc., desires to know how to bring in his client's representatives; or, again, the case of a party who desires to get out of the cause, or that of a stranger who desires to get into it.. So the methods of Discovery of Evidence, and the methods of Taking Evidence, are similarly elucidated by analyses such as are given on pp. 1619 and 1656. More important still is the light thrown on the various modes of trial and of getting a new trial, when we consider

Trial by Jury, with the resulting verdict and judgment, and the means of getting a new trial after verdict, as one connected course of proceeding traced by itself irrespective of the other modes of trial; and when, in a similar way, we consider Trial and Judgment by the Court alone, and the review thereof; Trial and Judgment by the Court with the Aid of a Jury on Special Issues, etc.; Trial by the Court with the aid of a Referee on Special Issues or Questions, etc.; and lastly, Trial by Referee.

It is only when we observe and apply these distinctions that we can intelligently distinguish the various paths, sometimes parallel and sometimes divergent, from which we may in practice choose the course for our client. These paths I have endeavored here to map out, as it were, in a way to suggest and contrast their various advantages and disadvantages. Familiar as we may have been with such distinctions, in practice, the effect of marshalling them in a consistent and harmonious whole seems like a distinct addition to one's knowledge, and to suggest the paradox that a knowledge of the whole is greater than a knowledge of all its parts.

A collection of reliable Forms has an undeniable value for the practitioner even if each is regarded merely as a distinct precedent for an isolated instrument. The practitioner who intends to use these precedents will, I trust, find an added value in observing also that each is a link in a chain of proceedings which is here exhibited in its contrasts with other proceedings, in a manner to aid him to make a judicious choice wherever the law allows a choice between them, and to avoid mistaking his remedy where the law does not allow a choice.

I have in an advanced state of preparation an equally practical treatment of Pleadings, and of Special Proceedings of every kind, which I hope before long to complete.

NEW YORK, September, 1888.

AUSTIN ABBOTT.

[NOTE BY PUBLISHERS.- The "Practical Treatment of Pleadings," was not, however, completed until after Mr. Abbott's decease; it was completed by the author of the present second edition of PRACTICE AND FORMS, and was issued in 1898 and 1900.]

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