A TREATISE ON WILL S. BY THOMAS JARMAN, ESQ., OF THE MIDDLE TEMPLE, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. LONDON: S. SWEET, CHANCERY LANE, FLEET STREET, AND A. MILLIKEN, GRAFTON STREET, DUBLIN. PREFACE. SIXTEEN years have now elapsed since the writer diffidently presented to the profession his first publication on Testamentary Law, in the form of an edition of Powell on Devises, with a supplementary treatise on the Construction of Devises. The reception given to this work was such as abundantly to compensate for the severe labour which it exacted, and under which the health of its Editor more than once sank. This was followed, after the interval of a few years, by the Tenth Volume of the Precedents in Conveyancing, being the portion of that work which was devoted to the same subject. The materials afforded by these publications have been freely used in the present work; but considering the very large accessions since made to the adjudications on testamentary law, and that it has not escaped the activity of modern legislation, it will be obvious that many of the various subjects embraced by so extensive a range of disquisition, now present themselves under a different aspect, requiring, not only very large additions to the matter which composed the former works, but the rejection of no inconsiderable portion of that matter; and the Writer is not ashamed to avow, that another, though certainly a less extensive, head of alteration arises from the changes a 2 which experience has wrought in some of the opinions of his earlier days. The result is, that probably more than one half of the present treatise is entirely original; and the writer therefore feels that he has to subject his performance (as partially new) to the criticism of his professional brethren, whose kind consideration he again bespeaks, convinced that those who are the most competent to detect error, will be the most generous and indulgent in the appreciation of the difficulties which beset the enquirer into the principles of one of the most intricate branches of our law. To those difficulties have been added the daily interruptions of professional avocation, which have long delayed, and have sometimes threatened wholly to prevent, the present publication. The recent act has created some additional embarrassment to a writer on Wills, by introducing new principles of construction, partial in their application; for, by drawing a line between wills of an earlier and those of a later date, the legislature has diminished the importance, without permitting the rejection or the neglect, of the old law. On these subjects, conciseness and compression have been specially aimed at, and some additional labour has been willingly incurred, in order to avoid incumbering the present work unnecessarily with matter, which every passing day tends to render less practically useful. THOMAS JARMAN. NEW SQUARE, LINCOLN'S INN, December, 1843. |