Copyright, 1881.

By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge :
Printed by H. O. Houghton and Company.

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE THIRD AMERICAN

EDITION.

THE second American edition of Benjamin on the Law of Sale, prepared with elaborate notes by the Hon. J. C. Perkins, since deceased, was published in 1877. Its rapid sale and the favorable comments upon it from all quarters prove it has no competitor in the same branch of the law. The subject is so prolific of litigation that every new edition must necessarily embrace much matter not contained in the preceding, and the present will be found to refer to over fifteen hundred cases not cited in any former edition. The Irish and Canadian Reports, not often referred to in any previous issue of the work, have been carefully examined, and many valuable cases cited therefrom. The undersigned desires to express his great obligation to George R. Swasey, Esq., of the Suffolk Bar, without whose valuable labors this edition could not have been so promptly and exhaustively prepared.

EDMUND H. BENNETT.

BOSTON, July 1, 1881.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

IF the well known treatise of Mr. Justice Blackburn had been designed by its learned author to embrace the whole law on the subject of the sale of goods, nothing further would now be needed by the practitioner than a new edition of that admirable work, incorporating the later statutes and decisions, so as to afford a connected view of the modifications necessarily introduced by lapse of time into the law of a contract so perpetually recurring as that of sale. But, unfortunately for the Profession, Blackburn on Sales was intentionally restricted in its scope, and is confined to an examination of the effects of the contract only, and of the legal rights of property and possession in goods.

An

This treatise is an attempt to develop the principles applicable to all branches of the subject, while following Blackburn on Sales as a model for guidance in the treatment of such topics as are embraced in that work. effort has been made to afford some compensation for the imperfections of the attempt, by references to American Decisions, and to the authorities in the Civil Law, not elsewhere so readily accessible.

TEMPLE, August, 1868.