Page:The Legal Observer, Or Journal of Jurisprudence, Volume 1, 1831.pdf/13

iv We are happy in being able to remind our readers that we have kept faith with them. No one promise in our original Prospectus has been left unfulfilled. But with this we have not contented ourselves. We have commenced and carried through a much more extensive plan than we at first proposed. It has been our aim to furnish a complete legal library; and, with the help of our and, we think we have succeeded.

We can only mention a few of the features which have distinguished our weekly publication. They are these:—We have been able to lay before our readers the earliest and most authentic information on all changes contemplated or effected in the Law, and on all professional appointments. We have given a series of original Reports in all the Courts of Law and Equity, which will well supply the place of the more expensive Law Reports; particularly as we have been able to give reports of the decisions of Courts of which there is at present no other report, as in the Practice Court of the King's Bench, and the nisi prius cases on the Home Circuit.

The friends and advocates of all moderate and practical reforms, we have been zealous in our opposition to those measures which would have inflicted on the country the evils of change without any of its benefits. From the earliest period of our existence, therefore, we have not ceased to expose and endeavour to defeat the Bill for the introduction of Local Courts into this country; and we take some credit to ourselves for enforcing and promulgating the true principles on which that pernicious proposal was founded. Our success has been complete; for the Bill is withdrawn, if not altogether abandoned.

We have fearlessly censured the conduct of public men, when we have thought it necessary to do so; but we have not stooped to personality, nor have we suffered ourselves to be made the vehicle either of mere idle gossip or of ill-matured remark.

These are the principles which have hitherto guided us; these are the principles which will continue to guide us. When we deviate from them, let our friends depart from us, and our enemies, if we have any, rejoice. And now we have only further to say, that as since our first appearance many new ways have opened to us for making our pages useful and interesting, so we doubt not that, as we shall pursue our course, cheered by the approbation and support of the Profession, new lights will break in, and we shall be able to render our work still more deserving of that favour which has already been so unsparingly bestowed.