cludes only decrees pronounced between the 1st of October, 1833, and March, 1836; but it is especially valuable, on account of its excellent arrangement, and the learned and lucid comments passed by that able judge upon the decrees contained in it-comments that have always been treated as of high authority by the Supreme Court.

Another compilation is the "Digest of the Decisions of the Supreme Court, from 1833 to 1842, compiled conjointly by Messrs. Morgan, Conderlag, and Beling," commonly known as "Morgan's Digest." This book is a compilation of all decrees deciding any point of law between those dates, with marginal notes and an index.

From 1842, down to the present time, there has been no full printed publication of the decisions of the Supreme Court. Isolated collections of cases have been published, such as Mr. Lorenz's "Reports for 1856;" Mr. Nell's "Collections of Decisions in Appeals from the Courts of Requests down to 1855;" Messrs. Beling and Vanderstraaten's "Collection of Police Court Cases;" and Mr. Austin's "Collection of Cases relating to the District Court of Kandy." An attempt has also been made to publish recent cases in a periodical publication termed "The Legal Miscellany;" but the mode of publication has, up to the present time, left the different portions of its plan incomplete, and difficult to refer to.

It will be seen from the above that, with a small ex

ception, the decrees on appeals from the District Courts to the Supreme Court, for a period of twenty-four years, have not been hitherto made public in any available form. Every one of the unpublished cases of any value as legal authority will be found to have a place in the present work.

Not only is so large a portion of the District Court appeal cases now for the first time printed, but also the few collections or digests above referred to are for the most part out of print, and can only be procured fortuitously; even some of those that the author has used for this work he was obliged to borrow, as they were not to be bought. The present work is, therefore, not only a first publication of the larger body of decrees on appeals from the District Courts, but is a fresh and needful republication of decrees not now readily to be referred to.

The absence of a complete publication of these decrees has led to litigation and error. The decrees of the Supreme Court, when unprinted, cannot afford instruction to the profession generally; and, consequently, that court has had to decide the same points, often elementary points, over and over again, because the district judges, magistrates, advocates, and proctors, have had no proper reports to refer to; indeed, even the judges. of the Supreme Court itself, having no index to its decisions, have elaborately adjudged many questions of law, in ignorance that those very questions had been as

elaborately adjudicated upon years before by their predecessors; or have unwittingly overruled those predecessors, and even themselves.

Under these circumstances, then, the usefulness of a complete digest of the decisions of the Supreme Court, arranged according to subjects, was obvious. The idea, however, of a digest soon expanded into the present work. The legal profession of Ceylon possesses no single text book of the law, as a whole, as it is administered in Ceylon. Compounded as the law is in Ceylon of the Roman-Dutch law, equity, and large portions of English common law, a lawyer in Ceylon requires a very composite library, the most important portion of which, that relating to Roman-Dutch law, is difficult to obtain. The Code Napoleon having been introduced into Holland in 1811, there have been, with the exception of two or three translations, no publications on Roman-Dutch law since that period; consequently books on that subject have been daily growing more scarce, and are now excessively expensive.

The object of this work is, then, to supply a very apparent want; and its plan is to present a very condensed account of the law as it is now administered in Ceylon.

The first book comprises an introduction, describing the relation of Ceylon to Great Britain; prerogative in Ceylon; the royal revenue of that colony; and the civil and criminal jurisdiction and practice of its courts.

The second book describes the civil jurisprudence of Ceylon; the third, the native laws. The work concludes with addenda, and an appendix of forms. The author regrets that the magnitude to which this work has extended, and the limits of his leave of absence from Ceylon, has prevented him from adding chapters on criminal jurisprudence and evidence.

This arrangement of the work, which is not the most. philosophical, was necessitated by the limited time the author has had to complete the work in England, and which made it desirable so to arrange the work, that, if it were not completed, any volume might be taken as a complete work in itself. This first volume is therefore a work complete in itself, on prerogative, revenue, local government, and practice. Similarly, the second volume will be mainly a work on the principles of Roman-Dutch jurisprudence, following the arrangement of Grotius' Introduction to that subject.

The Roman-Dutch law, the basis of the law of Ceylon, is composed of the civil law, and of such ordinances and edicts as the supreme authority in Holland from time to time enacted. As those ordinances related in a large measure to the feudal tenure, the regulation of dyke rights, and other matters which can have no application in Ceylon, the Roman-Dutch law, as administered there, approaches more nearly to civil law than it did when administered in Holland. Works therefore on the civil law are of high authority in Ceylon, and the pro

fession there are under an obligation for the publication of such accessible volumes as those of Mackeldy, Maynz, Phillimore, and Sandars, and which accordingly will be found to be largely referred to in this work.

The Roman-Dutch law is founded upon such admirable principles that much of it remains unaltered, and it contains, as portions of its very frame, many of those "improvements" which English law reformers are arguing for, and which are so reluctantly accorded: thus there is a complete and intimate union of law and equity under that law; and every court in Ceylon is a court both of law and equity, and decides every question before it on the principles of equity when applicable. Accordingly the reader will find in this work the standard treatises on equity largely referred to.

Again, there is no distinction between real and personal property, except as to the form of the conveyance; and, consequently, both kinds of property pass to the executor or administrator, and not to the heir, and both real and personal property are liable to be taken in execution in a given order.

In Ceylon, no jury is necessary in civil cases; consequently, justice is not defeated by the absence of material witnesses at critical portions of a trial; as, by the necessarily large power of adjournment, the Court can, under terms, always allow a party time and opportunity to bring his whole cause before the Court.

The law of delict may in several points be said to