PREFACE.

This volume is my contribution to the youth of the State of Indiana. If it shall teach them a better knowledge

of the laws and institutions and enable them to become better citizens of this State, I shall be amply repaid. I have endeavored to be so plain that the simplest mind could understand me. All technicalities and technical expressions have been studiously avoided. Perhaps the book contains technical inaccuracies; but that is the necessary result, if there be any, of the attempt to use plain and simple language. My constant effort has been to make the subject attractive to the reader, and to relieve it of dry and unnecessary details. In every school there should be a recent edition of the Statutes of this State, to be used as a reference book, the same as an ordinary dictionary is used.

WILLIAM W. THORNTON.

INDIANAPOLIS, IND., July 1, 1898.