PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
Although it is universally agreed that the public have reaped some advantages by the Acts of the 4th Geo. II. c. 26, and 6th Geo. II. c. 14, requiring all Law-Pleadings, Deeds, &c. to be thereafter written in English, yet the Tax growing from those advantages is become so excessive, that few persons are now to be found capable of reading or explaining old Deeds and Charters, with any satisfaction to themselves or others.
This great inconvenience must have arisen from the Acts above mentioned; for, it being vainly imagined that, after the passing of those Acts, Court-Hand and Latin were unnecessary accomplishments for a Lawyer, young gentlemen were frequently articled to Attorneys and Solicitors without the knowledge of either; and even called to the Bar without learning to read the Court-Hand or the Abbreviations of it. The inconveniences brought on by this neglect were in some measure salved pro tempore by Old Practitioners then living, who were in business when the Law-Pleadings were in Latin, and were familiar with the contractions; but time having gradually deprived the Law of those valuable Gentlemen of the profession, I believe it may, with truth and modesty, be affirmed, from the numerous applications that are made to me on that subject, that the Reading of the old Law-Hands is at this day very nearly (if not altogether) become obsolete, though useful. I make this declaration with some concern; for although it is not necessary, as the Law now stands, to write theCourt
