PREFACE TO THE FIFTH EDITION.

The

OF Sir Thomas Ireland, by whom the first eleven books of Coke's Reports were abridged, I have been unable to find any further particulars than those stated in the title page and preface to the third edition of his abridgment, excepting that he also abridged the reports of Sir James Dyer, printed in 1651. third edition of the abridgment of Coke, from which the present is taken, was printed in 1657. There had been a previous edition, whether the first or second, I cannot discover, in 1650, and a later one in 1666; so that this work had gone through no less than four impressions within no very long period after the original reports of Sir Edward Coke first appeared; an unequivocal sign of the estimation in which it was held.

To the American edition, is added an abridgment of the twelfth and thirteenth books of the reports. These were not published until after the death of the author, and although containing some important deci sions, are not, in general, of as much utility to the practitioner as the former books. Many of the cases, although of importance when decided, have now become useless to the merely practical lawyer, as well in England as in this country: the abolition of the feudal tenures and of the courts of star-chamber and high commissions have rendered many of the decisions obsolete in that country; and in this, our never having adopted the ecclesiastical jurisdictions, and our different judicial polity, render many more inapplicable. In forming the abridgment of these two parts, reference has always been had to the importance of the decision. In the description of cases just referred to, the utmost brevity

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has been studied, and merely the statement of the case, and the points which were adjudicated, are given; in other instances they have been extended to a greater length.

The phraseology of the original reports has been preserved as far as was consistent with the nature of the work.

As the eleven books, abridged by Sir Thomas Ireland, were not submitted to the revisal of the person who abridged the two last, he does not consider himself accountable for any inaccuracies which may be discovered in them.