A Treatise on the Law of Negotiable Instruments

decisions, for in them every possible view of the doctrine in all its branches has been considered, its rules established, and its limitations accurately defined." But when Chancellor Kent wrote his Commentaries, such a thing as a coupon bond was unknown in the United States. When Story sent forth his treatises on Bills and on Notes from Cambridge, it was yet a feeble adventurer, timidly feeling its way on the stock exchange. And although when Professor Parsons published his work in 1862, it had been recognized as a negotiable instrument, and was becoming familiar to the public eye, the law concerning it was yet in such an inchoate state that a few pages comprehended all that he saw fit to say about it. Now there is no more important figure in financial circles than a coupon bond. There is scarcely a town or county in the United States that has not become interested in it, and the law relating to it has grown into an important title, which would fully justify its embodiment in a separate and independent work. We find, also, an increasing disposition to impart certain negotiable qualities to instruments and documentary evidences of title, which, by the common law, are as devoid of such qualities as any chattel sold behind the counter of a merchant. In some of the States, bonds are placed on the same footing as promissory notes. In some of them deeds to real estate and docketed judgments are just as negotiable as bills of exchange; and in all of them, so to speak, the spirit of negotiability is enlarging its bounds, extending its influence, and impressing itself upon mercantile transactions.

These reflections have led to the production of this work. It is the first effort to embrace in one treatise a classification of all negotiable instruments, with an exposition of the law touching each variety of them. And this has seemed to us the most convenient and philosophical mode of presenting and expounding the law, notwithstanding the views expressed by that great jurist and author, Justice Story, who followed, as he favored, a different plan. To him it seemed (as he states in the preface to his work on Bills of Exchange), that "great practical inconvenience” would result “from uniting and intermixing the doctrines respecting bills of exchange and promissory notes in one and the same trear tise"; and if his idea be accepted, still greater practical inconvenience would result from gathering under one roof all the members of the negotiable family. But his own learned productions, to our mind, rebut his theory. Whole sections and pages-and, indeed, we may almost say chapters-of his treatise on Bills are

literally transcribed in the succeeding one on Notes. And while there are certain distinctions always to be observed between the two classes of papers, there are more identities in, than differences between, them; and the differences can always be readily recognized and defined. To use Tennyson's phrase, they are "alike in difference." Indeed, not only may bills and notes be conveniently treated in conjunction with each other (as in fact they have been most successfully treated by Bayley, Byles, Thomson, and Parsons); but their kindred which are "bone of the same bone and flesh of the same flesh," are like the sciences, which, Lord Bacon says, "dwell sociably together." Checks, so closely assimilated to bills of exchange that they are sometimes called "peculiar kinds of bills," may be fully treated under the same cover with bills, by simply pointing out their peculiar differences and uses.

Coupon bonds, so nearly identical with promissory notes that they might be fitly termed "peculiar kinds of notes," may be thoroughly explained by exhibiting their peculiar variations from them in form, and in the functions which they fulfil. And every species of instrument, really or quasi negotiable, may be either thoroughly expounded or, at least, aptly illustrated by a delineation of its lines of departure from the general principles which apply to these two great species of the negotiable genus, bills of exchange and promissory notes.

Such, at least, have been the considerations which inspired the undertaking, the fruit of which is now with diffidence submitted to a practical and critical, but liberal profession. Composed in hours snatched from other exacting labors of the office and the bar, the author can not hope that it will be found free from many crudities of style and other more serious imperfections; but if it contain aught of merit, he feels assured that an enlightened profession will not fail to discern it, nor to apply it as equitable offset to those defects which only the amplest resources of leisure and learning could avoid.

To Mr. P. C. NICHOLAS, Librarian of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, the author is much indebted for many courtesies extended and many facilities afforded him, while pursuing his investigations, in the ample collection of books under his charge; and he begs leave here to acknowledge his obligation and record his thanks. He would be lacking in appreciation and gratitude did he not also here express to his publishers, Messrs. BAKER, VOORHIS & CO., of New York, his sense of the liberal.

and unremitting kindness with which they have aided and encour. aged his work. They have been lacking in nothing that fairness could ask of them, or that an accommodating spirit could suggest to them; and he only trusts that the result may leave them no cause to regret their own generous course.

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