precious metals to leave the kingdom may, by narrowing the basis of the currency, endanger the whole superstructure. During the suspension of cash payments and the circulation of one pound notes, nearly every payment in this country was made in paper. And some idea may be formed of the immense amount of property now afloat in bills and notes, when it is considered that all payments for our immense exports and imports, almost every remittance to and from every quarter of the world, nearly every payment of large amount between distant places in the kingdom, and a large proportion of payments in the same place, are made through the intervention of bills; not to mention the amount of common promissory notes, at long and short dates, the notes of the Bank of England and country banks, and the universal and daily increasing use of cheques. It will not, perhaps, be an unreasonable inference that the bills and notes of all kinds, issued and circulated in the United Kingdom in the space of a single year, amount to many hundred millions. Simple as the form of a bill or note may appear, the rights and liabilities of the different parties to those instruments have given rise to an infinity of legal questions, and multitudes of decisions-a striking proof of what the experience of all ages had already made abundantly manifest, that law is, in its own nature, necessarily voluminous; that its complexity and bulk constitute the price that must be paid for the reign of certainty, order, and uniformity ; and that any attempt to regulate multiform combinations of circumstances by a few general rules, however skilfully constructed, must be abortive. In France this subject has been briefly but luminously treated, first by Dupuy de la Serra, in a little book entitled "L'Art des Lettres de Change," and afterwards by Pothier, whose work as well as his other performances, and in particular the Traité des Obligations, evinces à profound acquaintance with the principles of jurisprudence, and extraordinary acumen and sagacity in their application; the result of the laborious exercise of his talents on the Roman law. There cannot be a greater proof of the surpassing merit of his works, than that, after the lapse of more than half a century, and a stupendous revolution in all the institutions of his country, many parts of his writings have been incorporated, word for word, in the new Code of France. The Traité du Contrat de Change is often cited in the English Courts of Law. "The authority of Pothier," says the present learned Chief Justice* of the Common Pleas, "is as high as can be had next to the decision of a Court of Justice in this country; his writings are considered by Sir William Jones as equal, in point of luminous method, apposite examples, and a clear manly style, to the works of Littleton on the Laws of England."+ In this country, the growth of the law on bills and notes has been almost proportionate to the increase of those instruments; insomuch that within the last sixty years the reported decisions upon them, in law, equity, and bankruptcy, would fill many volumes. Numerous have been the attempts to reduce the mass of authorities to the shape of a regular treatise; but amongst all these, two only are now in common use in the Profession, the treatise of Mr. Chitty, and the summary of Mr. Justice Bayley. * Lord Chief Justice Best. † Cox v. Troy, 5 B. & A. 481. There is now also an able modern French work on the same subject by M. Nouguier. In America have recently appeared the Commentaries of Mr. Justice Story on the Law of Bills of Exchange, and his Commentaries on the Law of Promissory Notes. Mr. Roscoe's Digest and Mr. Johnson's book had not appeared when these observations were written. The work of the learned Judge is written with the greatest circumspection; but it is now out of print, and the latest edition some years old.* Mr. Chitty's treatise is a laborious and full collection of almost all the cases, by an eminent counsel, the extent of whose legal acquirements, and the readiness of their application, can only be appreciated by those who have been in the habit of personal intercourse with him. But the size of the book is an objection with many, and a cloud of authorities will sometimes obscure the most luminous arrangement. This little work does not aspire to compete with either of the above learned performances, but merely to supply a want, felt by many, of a plain and brief summary of the principal practical points relating to bills and notes, supported by a reference to the leading or latest authorities. In many cases, the reader will, however, find the law laid down in the very words of the judgment, a plan which the Author has been induced to adopt, partly that those who may not have ready access to the authorities may be satisfied that the law is correctly stated; and partly because he distrusted his own ability to enunciate, on so complicated a subject, a general rule, neither too narrow nor too wide, beset, as almost all such general rules now are, with numerous qualifications and exceptions. No pains have been spared to render the subject intelligible. How far the book is likely to be useful in practice, it is for others to determine. INNER TEMPLE, JOHN BARNARD BYLES. * A new edition has since been published. |