From the AUTHOR'S PREFACE. "How to Study Law" is a question of importance to an ever increasing number of persons who desire a practical and inexpensive method of fitting themselves for the legal profession. The same question is also suggesting itself to persons who are, or expect to be, established in other callings, who wish to understand their privileges and responsibilities under the law, and the legal ties that regulate their varied business and social relations. This book - introducing the Home Law School Series - seeks to answer this question in a manner at once practical and satisfactory to students in every sphere and condition of life. The Series, it is hoped, will aid the law office student and the law school student, as well as that great class of persons who are unable to have the advantages of either school or office instruction. The time has arrived in America in which a person who wishes to succeed must be able to think as well as act. The law offers a large and expanding field for the development of character and personality, and a knowledge of it is as beneficial from the standpoint of a liberal education as from that of a life calling. Blackstone claimed for his lectures that they were "as a general map of the law, marking out the shape of the country, its connections and boundaries, its greater divisions and principal cities" and that it was not his business "to describe minutely the subordinate limits, or to fix the longitude and latitude of every inconsiderable hamlet." He believed that the students' attention should be engaged "in tracing out the originals and as it were the elements of the law, '" and cited Justinian to the effect that if "the tender understanding of the student be loaded at the first with a multitude and variety of matter, it will either occasion him to desert his studies or will carry him heavily through them, with much labor, delay and despondence." Intro. Bl. Com. p. 36. The Home Law School Series aims to perform the same office for the American student as the Commentaries did for the English student of law. It will be the fixed and general principles of law and practice that will be chiefly dealt with; and these will be laid before the student in a plain and simplified manner. The minute provisions of statutary law will be indicated and the students prepared for their interpretation and application. The same author quoted above has said that a plan of this nature, if executed with care and ability, cannot fail of administering a most useful and rational entertainment to students of all ranks and professions, and that, an attention not greater than is usually bestowed in mastering the rudiments of other sciences, or in pursuing a favorite recreation or exercise, will be sufficient to encompass in this manner the principles and grounds of the law. Law is the garnered wisdom of ages of political development and the true conservator of civilization. It nominates the duties of the citizen and sanctifies the rights of the individual. These rights and duties must be known and fulfilled if our nation is to exist for any extended period and answer the high purposes for which it was established. We trust that the method herein presented of encouraging a knowledge of the laws and institutions of our advanced civilization will meet with the approval of the general public, and be a help and a benefit to those who desire this knowledge.