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G. WOODFALL, ANGEL COURT, SKINNER STREET, LONDON.

TO

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

JOHN, EARL OF ELDON,

&c. &c. &c.

MY LORD,

LORD

It is now some years since I received your SHIP's permission to dedicate to you the first Edition of these Decisions. In submitting them to the public, I considered it to be a duty which I owed to the eminent Person from whom they were transmitted to me, to endeavour to procure for them no less an honor than your LORDSHIP's patronage. The success which they have obtained has given me the satisfactory assurance, that neither the zeal of an Editor, nor the partiality of a Grandson, had tempted me to obtrude upon your LORDSHIP, productions unsuitable to the dignity of your wisdom and learning.

The elevated station which your LORDSHIP then occupied, a due sense of the great distance at which I was placed from you, with a certain fear lest the language of admiration or of gratitude might be construed into adulation, restrained me from expressing the sentiments which I then felt, and shall ever feel,

for your great and spotless character. I therefore contented myself with simply prefixing your venerated Name to the work.

Time however, my LORD, has conquered the diffidence which once prevented me from addressing you; and as retirement from power has been truly said to sanctify and canonize a great character, I now venture to offer that respectful tribute, which I had formerly been induced to withhold. Permit me, therefore, in presenting to you the Second Edition of these Cases, to record with sentiments of the sincerest gratitude, my deep sense of the many favors which you have conferred upon me: from the first kind personal notice with which you honored me, at a time when such an honor was of no ordinary value, down to that great mark of confidence which your LORDSHIP gave me, in promoting me to an honorable and important office in the Court where you have so long presided.

During the space of more than a Quarter of a Century, a period much exceeding the judicial life of any of your predecessors,-it has been your LORDSHIP's praise to have given the last hand to the most finished and perfect system of Equity in existence. As long as the structure raised by the Ellesmeres and Nottinghams, the Somerses and Hardwickes, endures, your admirable judgments which have so symmetrized and refined it, will descend with it in honor to Posterity. But though the volumes which record them will ever be consulted with advantage,

and perused with admiration, none but those who have themselves been witnesses of your sagacity, your patience, and your energy, of your unwearied diligence, of your equal temper, of your gentle and condescending manners, can form a complete idea of the transcendent merits of your judicial character. An union of many great and rare excellencies present in your LORDSHIP, the truly virtuous and exemplary Magistrate; the consistent Politician; the most profoundly learned and accomplished Lawyer either of ancient or modern times; one of the greatest, wisest, and best Men of the age.

That your LORDSHIP may long enjoy the well earned reward of so many years of honorable labor, in the gratitude of your Country, and the love and veneration of a Profession which you have so much elevated and adorned, is the sincere and respectful wish of,

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