This little work does not aspire to compete with the learned productions of Redfield, Chitty, or Story, but merely to supply a want, felt by many to exist in this age of perpetual motion, of a plain and brief summary of the rights and liabilities of carriers and passengers by land and by water.
An attempt is made in the following pages to combine instruction with entertainment, information with amusement, and to impart knowledge while beguiling a few hours in a railway carriage, or on a steamboat. Whilst it is hoped that the general public will peruse with interest the text, containing elegant extracts from ponderous legal tomes—gems from the rich mines of legal lore—and where in many cases the law is laid down in the very words of learned judges of England, Canada, and the United States; the notes—a cloud of authorities—the index and the list of cases are inserted for the special delectation of the professional reader.
Though written in Ontario, the book will be found applicable to all parts of the Dominion, as well as to the United States and England.
The author, even if the style is deemed novel, does not seek the praise of originality for the substance of the following chapters, as the greater portion of the text, and well nigh all the notes, have been taken from the works of others, to whom all due thanks are now rendered.
How far the book is likely to be of use to the seeker after knowledge, or of assistance to those desiring to kill time, is for others to determine. If mistakes be discovered it is hoped that the reader—professional or otherwise—will bear with them, “for if the work be found of sufficient merit to require another edition, they will probably be corrected, and if no such demand is made the book has received as much labor as it deserves.”
The author is very “’umble, coming of an ’umble family,” like the celebrated Uriah—not the Hittite, but he of the Heap tribe—and he will be quite content and satisfied if every reader, after having perused this work, says of him as Lord Thurlow said of Mansfield: “A surprising man; ninety-nine times out of a hundred he is right in his opinions and decisions, and when once in a hundred times he is wrong, ninety-nine men out of a hundred would not discover it.”
PREFACE
TO THE
AMERICAN EDITION.
In this present year of grace the British Lion is gently purring in the centennial eyry of the American Eagle; thither also, the Canadian Beaver, with a maple-leaf, the emblem of sweetness, in his mouth, has wended its way: a striking contrast to the deeds of one hundred years agone, when the followers of the quadrupeds were striving, teeth and claw, to send the lovers of the biped to that bourne from which no traveller returns.