We cannot perceive any sufficient reason for the publication of this book. The tribunal whose decisions it reports, is not of the last resort;[1] they therefore are of very questionable authority, even in Maryland; and the Chancellor, though evidently a man of sense and learning, has not, like Kent, Marshall, or Hardwicke, that towering reputation which will stamp his _dicta_ as law (either persuasively or conclusively) beyond the limits of his own state. The cases reported in chief, are all decided by the author of the book. In the notes are given many decisions of his predecessors. So that, wherever we look, there is still but the same inadequate weight of name and station. [Footnote 1: Constitution of Maryland, Art. 56.] Now, the enormous multiplication of books in every branch of knowledge is one of the greatest evils of this age; since it presents one of the most serious obstacles to the acquisition of correct information, by throwing in the reader's way piles of lumber, in which he must painfully grope for the scraps of useful matter, peradventure interspersed. In no department have the complaints of this evil been louder or more just, than in the law. There are five and twenty supreme courts, or courts of appeals, in the United States, (not to mention Arkansas or Michigan) each of which probably emits a yearly volume of its “cases;” besides as many professed _legislative_ law-factories, all possessed with the notion of being Solons and Lycurguses. These surely can give both lawyers and people _rules of conduct_ enough to keep their wits on the stretch, without any supplies from inauthoritative sources. The law books we get from England would of themselves now suffice to employ those _lucubrations of twenty years_, which used to be deemed few enough for a mastery of the legal profession. From these considerations, we hold him to be no friend to lawyers—and hardly a good citizen—who heedlessly {732} sends forth a bulky addition to their reading, to encumber and perplex the science, and make it more and more a riddle to common minds. The volume before us, besides these more general objections, is liable to at least another special one. Many of its cases are inordinately voluminous. That of _Hannah K. Chase_ fills 30 pages—_Lingan_ v. _Henderson_ 47 pages—_Cunningham_ v. _Browning_ 33 pages—_Owings'_ case 40 pages—and “the Chancellor's case” 92 pages! The third one of these cases involves no principle that can _probably_ affect any mortal out of Maryland, and the last is not even a _judicial_ decision in Maryland! It is a mere determination of the legislature of that state, touching the salary of a judge. They might all, we are full sure, hare been shortened by two-thirds, with great advantage to their perspicuity, as well as to the reader's time, patience and money.