Preface
This book, as its title indicates, is an Introduction to Roman-Dutch Law. It has grown out of a course of lectures delivered in the University of London at intervals in the years 1906–14. During this time I was frequently asked by students to recommend a text-book which would help them in their reading and perhaps enable them to satisfy the requirements of the University or of the Council of Legal Education. The book was not to be found. The classical Introduction to the Jurisprudence of the Province of Holland of Grotius, published in the year 1631, inevitably leaves the reader in a state of bewilderment as to the nature and content of the Roman-Dutch Law administered at the present day by the Courts of South Africa, Ceylon, and British Guiana. The same must be said of the treatise of Simon van Leeuwen entitled The Roman-Dutch Law, published in 1664, and of the elementary Handbook of Joannes van der Linden, published in 1806.
Of more modern works the excellent volume of Mr. G. T. Morice entitled English and Roman-Dutch Law scarcely meets the needs of the mere beginner, while the Institutes of Cape Law of Chief Justice Sir A. F. S. Maasdorp, the weighty work of Dr. Manfred Nathan on The Common Law of South Africa, and the Laws of Ceylon of Mr. Justice Pereira, besides being not especially fitted for the use of students, deal only with the laws of the several
