Excerpt from The Principles of Common Law and Equity Procedure: A Manual of Vermont Court Procedure, Relating Also the Duties of Public Officers, Especially Sheriffs, Notaries Public, Town Clerks, Selectmen, Overseers of the Poor, and Various Others, With Appropriate
This volume aims at a broader utility. Its purpose, — to adopt the recent words of an eminent scholar, — is not to make the reader a lawyer, but to make him understand what the law is. If it can diffuse through the community a clearer understanding of the primary legal principles which underlie the structure of our civilization; can give to the term Ameri canism a more definite meaning in the minds of some whose ancestral traditions do not contain that word; can exhibit to the people of this State some of the lofty ideals which our forefathers conceived for the furtherance of the public wel fare; can make the use of legal language somewhat more accurate, not only in the public press but in the community at large, and can help the people to think intelligently and act wisely upon legal subjects when they have practical occasion, then will the primary purpose of this volume have been attained.
In all parts of this volume it is assumed that whoever looks here for information will have at hand the Public Stat utes of 1906, and the various session laws since that year, to which books reference must constantly be made, for a full understanding of much that can only be suggested here. To bring within the compass of this volume the contents of more than three thousand pages of statutes, with all the forms relating thereto, would clearly be impossible; while changes in statutes are so frequent that the mere repetition of their exact language in this book, to any considerable extent, would be a waste of valuable space.