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TO READERS.

SINCE the commencement of this journal, we have given abstracts of the principal cases in Peter's Reports, vols. 1, 2, 3, 4; Pickering's Reports, vols. 6 and 7; Mason's Reports, vol. 4; Day's Connecticut Reports, vol. 6-part 1, vol. 7; Wendell's Reports, vols. 1, 2, 3, and 4; New Hampshire Cases, vol. 4, part 1 ; Harris & Gill's Reports, vols. 1 and 2; Greenleaf's Reports, vol. 5; M'Cord's Reports, vol. 4; Rawle's Reports, vol. 1.

It was intended to have given cases from 8 Pickering, 1 and 2 Vermont Reports, and the remaining part of 4 New Hampshire Reports, in the present number, which would have embraced all the new reports that have come to our hands, since we commenced the digests of cases, excepting Paige's Chancery Reports; but we had selected so freely from the three last volumes of Mr. Wendell, which contain a very large proportion of interesting questions and strong cases, that we found we had insensibly filled all the space we had to spare.

We are fully sensible of the interest of this part of our work to all our readers, and its practical importance to very many of them, since it gives them, at a comparatively inconsiderable expense, abstracts of all the important contemporary American decisions; and it is probable that, to many of them, only a small part of the reports are readily accessible. To such our quarterly epitome of the adjudications not only affords the gratification, common to them and all other professional readers, of following the course of jurisprudence in the various judicatories of the country, but also the practical advantage of reference and consultation. By making a more rigid selection, we shall be able to give the cases of most general interest from all the reports. We shall accordingly continue to make it one of the objects of our work, early to lay before our readers abstracts of the most important decisions in the various parts of the country, as far as we can be supplied with the reports. We do not intend, however, to confine ourselves exclusively to cases of general application; we include others where they present something singular in the jurisprudence, or strikingly illustrative of the laws and institutions or pursuits, of any state.

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