The Online Library of Liberty A Project Of Liberty Fund, Inc. Sir Frederick Pollock, The Law of Torts: A Treatise on the Principles of Obligations arising from Civil Wrongs in the Common Law (4th ed.) [1886] The Online Library Of Liberty This E-Book (PDF format) is published by Liberty Fund, Inc., a private, non-profit, educational foundation established in 1960 to encourage study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. 2010 was the 50th anniversary year of the founding of Liberty Fund. It is part of the Online Library of Liberty web site http://oll.libertyfund.org, which was established in 2004 in order to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. To find out more about the author or title, to use the site's powerful search engine, to see other titles in other formats (HTML, facsimile PDF), or to make use of the hundreds of essays, educational aids, and study guides, please visit the OLL web site. 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Edition Used: The Law of Torts: A Treatise on the Principles of Obligations arising from Civil Wrongs in the Common Law: to which is added the Draft of a Code of Civil Wrongs prepared for the Government of India, Fourth Edition (London: Stevens and Sons, 1895). Author: Sir Frederick Pollock About This Title: One of Pollock’s more substantial works which also contains his draft on a law of torts prepared for the government of India. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 2 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2123 Online Library of Liberty: The Law of Torts: A Treatise on the Principles of Obligations arising from Civil Wrongs in the Common Law (4th ed.) About Liberty Fund: Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals. Copyright Information: The text is in the public domain. Fair Use Statement: This material is put online to further the educational goals of Liberty Fund, Inc. Unless otherwise stated in the Copyright Information section above, this material may be used freely for educational and academic purposes. It may not be used in any way for profit. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 3 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2123 Online Library of Liberty: The Law of Torts: A Treatise on the Principles of Obligations arising from Civil Wrongs in the Common Law (4th ed.) Table Of Contents To the Honourable Oliver Wendell Holmes, Junr., a Justice of the Supreme Judicial Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Advertisement to the Fourth Edition. Addenda. Year Books Cited. The Law of Torts. Book I.—: General Part. Chapter I.: The Nature of Tort In General. Chapter II.: Principles of Liability. Chapter III.: Persons Affected By Torts. Chapter IV.: General Exceptions. Chapter V.: Of Remedies For Torts. Book II.: Specific Wrongs. Chapter VI.: Personal Wrongs. Chapter VII.: Defamation. Chapter VIII.: Wrongs of Fraud and Malice. Chapter IX.: Wrongs to Possession and Property. Chapter X.: Nuisance. Chapter XI.: Negligence ( a ) . Chapter XII.: Duties of Insuring Safety. Chapter XIII.: Special Relations of Contract and Tort. Appendix Appendix A. Historical Note On the Classification of the Forms of Personal Action. Appendix B. Employers’ Liability Act, 1880. Appendix C. Statutes of Limitation. Appendix D. Contributory Negligence In Roman Law. Draft of a Civil Wrongs Bill, Prepared For the Government of India. TO THE MEMORY of THE RIGHT HONOURABLE SIR JAMES SHAW WILLES, Knt. SOMETIME A JUSTICE OF THE COMMON BENCH, A MAN COURTEOUS AND ACCOMPLISHED, A JUDGE WISE AND VALIANT. PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 4 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2123 Online Library of Liberty: The Law of Torts: A Treatise on the Principles of Obligations arising from Civil Wrongs in the Common Law (4th ed.) [Back to Table of Contents] TO THE HONOURABLE OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, Junr., A JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME JUDICIAL COURT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS. My Dear Holmes, A preface is a formal and a tedious thing at best; it is at its worst when the author, as has been common in law-books, writes of himself in the third person. Yet there are one or two things I wish to say on this occasion, and cannot well say in the book itself; by your leave, therefore, I will so far trespass on your friendship as to send the book to you with an open letter of introduction. It may seem a mere artifice, but the assurance of your sympathy will enable me to speak more freely and naturally, even in print, than if my words were directly addressed to the profession at large. Nay more, I would fain sum up in this slight token the brotherhood that subsists, and we trust ever shall, between all true followers of the Common Law here and on your side of the water; and give it to be understood, for my own part, how much my work owes to you and to others in America, mostly citizens of your own Commonwealth, of whom some are known to me only by their published writing, some by commerce of letters; there are some also, fewer than I could wish, whom I have had the happiness of meeting face to face. When I came into your jurisdiction, it was from the Province of Quebec, a part of Her Majesty’s dominions which is governed, as you know, by its old French law, lately repaired and beautified in a sort of Revised Version of the Code Napoléon. This, I doubt not, is an excellent thing in its place. And it is indubitable that, in a political sense, the English lawyer who travels from Montreal to Boston exchanges the rights of a natural-born subject for the comity accorded by the United States to friendly aliens. But when his eye is caught, in the every-day advertisements of the first Boston newspaper he takes up, by these words—“Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Suffolk to wit”—no amount of political geography will convince him that he has gone into foreign parts and has not rather come home. Of Harvard and its Law School I will say only this, that I have endeavoured to turn to practical account the lessons of what I saw and heard there, and that this present book is in some measure the outcome of that endeavour. It contains the substance of between two and three years’ lectures in the Inns of Court, and nearly everything advanced in it has been put into shape after, or concurrently with, free oral exposition and discussion of the leading cases. My claim to your good will, however, does not rest on these grounds alone. I claim it because the purpose of this book is to show that there really is a Law of Torts, not merely a number of rules of law about various kinds of torts—that this is a true living branch of the Common Law, not a collection of heterogeneous instances. In such a cause I make bold to count on your sympathy, though I will not presume on your final PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011) 5 http://oll.libertyfund.org/title/2123 Online Library of Liberty: The Law of Torts: A Treatise on the Principles of Obligations arising from Civil Wrongs in the Common Law (4th ed.) opinion. The contention is certainly not superfluous, for it seems opposed to the weight of recent opinion among those who have fairly faced the problem. You will recognize in my armoury some weapons of your own forging, and if they are ineffective, I must have handled them worse than I am willing, in any reasonable terms of humility, to suppose. It is not surprising, in any case, that a complete theory of Torts is yet to seek, for the subject is altogether modern. The earliest text-book I have been able to find is a meagre and unthinking digest of “The Law of Actions on the Case for Torts and Wrongs,” published in 1720, remarkable chiefly for the depths of historical ignorance which it occasionally reveals. The really scientific treatment of principles begins only with the decisions of the last fifty years; their development belongs to that classical period of our jurisprudence which in England came between the Common Law Procedure Act and the Judicature Act. Lord Blackburn and Lord Bramwell, who then rejoiced in their strength, are still with us.* It were impertinent to weigh too nicely the fame of living masters; but I think we may securely anticipate posterity in ranking the names of these (and I am sure we cannot more greatly honour them) with the name of their colleague Willes, a consummate lawyer too early cut off, who did not live to see the full fruit of his labour.