PREFACE. I HAVE proposed to myself in the preparation of these volumes the production of a work which shall supplement rather than supplant the other American and English treatises upon the subject. There is, perhaps, very little reason for the publication at this time of another conventional treatise on railway law; especial attention has, therefore, been given here to such branches of the general law of railways as seem to have been lightly or inadequately treated elsewhere. I have considered in much detail so much of the law of corporations as is applicable to railways, and I have endeavored to present fully the law of railway finance, including that of railway securities and the foreclosure of railway mortgages. The law of interstate commerce is, I believe, exhaustively set forth, and there is, in that connection, included a discussion of the several questions that have come prominently to the front since the enactment of the federal statute of February 4, 1887, entitled "An act to regulate commerce." The law of carriers, on the contrary, and (v) questions of injury and negligence, have been somewhat more lightly treated. In a word, I have endeavored to present the whole law of railways, having, however, a due regard to what may be called its prospective, in giving prominence to live and novel phases of the subject. I have to this end, also, included very careful reference at every point to the English statutes and decisions-a matter hitherto wholly overlooked in American works on the subject— both because of the intrinsic value of what has been done in England toward the building up of a sound and stable system of railway law, and because there is in the United States among the thoughtful portion of our profession a growing concern about English decisions and statutes regarding the matter here in hand. Our railway system in America develops in general along somewhat the same lines already adjusted in the mother country, and things with us determine finally into their places much as they have done for our brethren in England. This interest in the British side of the problem may be expected to grow with the better sort of our lawyers and judges, and it has been both to anticipate and to foster this tendency that I have given such detailed attention to the statutes and decisions of a foreign jurisdiction. In conclusion, I have made a work apt, I believe, me. the to prove useful to railway lawyers throughout the United States. It may also sometimes be found serviceable abroad. I have written into it whatever I have learned in my own practice as well as the in learning of the decided cases. I know that I know what a railway lawyer needs; I think I have written what such a lawyer will use and value. re the ery CHARLES F. BEACH, JR. 29, William Street, New York, |