MEMBER L'INSTITUT DE DROIT INTERNATIONAL; LATE PROFESSOR OF REAL ESTATE FORMERLY CIRCUIT JUDGE OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE EIGHTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT, AND CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF IOWA. FOURTH EDITION, THOROUGHLY REVISED AND ENLARGED. VOL. I. BOSTON: LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 1890. TO THE HONORABLE SAMUEL F. MILLER, LL.D., ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. YOUR ACKNOWLEDGED MASTERY OF THE SUBJECT TO WHICH YOUR ESTABLISHED AND PERMANENT RANK IN OUR JURIDICAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY AS A GREAT AND ILLUS TRIOUS JUDGE MAKES IT AN HONOR, AND OUR LONG AND UNBROKEN FRIENDSHIP MAKES IT A ALBEIT THE EVENING SHADOWS OF OUR LIVES FALL UPON THE PAGE, TO REINSCRIBE TO YOU WITH UNALTERED REGARD AND VENERATION THIS REVISED EDITION OF A WORK WHICH, MORE THAN EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO, WAS ORIGINALLY DEDICATED TO YOU. PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION. In the nine years that have passed since the last edition of these Commentaries appeared, constitutional provisions have been adopted, legislative enactments passed, and numerous State and Federal decisions made on the important subjects which are embraced in its plan. And thus the law has not only been still further extended on previous lines, but it has in material respects been modified, altered, and enlarged. This is well known to those who have kept currently informed of the general progress of our jurisprudence; it will be apparent to all who shall compare the chapters of the present edition with the corresponding chapters of the previous edition upon Constitutional Limitations, Contracts, Streets, Eminent Domain, Taxation, Actions and Liabilities. That the work shall adequately present the law relating to our Municipalities as it exists to-day, the author has spared no reasonable labor. The adjudged cases to date have been examined one by one, and the results thereof are embodied in this edition. Grateful to the Courts and to the Profession for the favor with which from the first they have regarded the work, and with, as the author trusts, a pardonable ambition on his part to improve it, he deems it to be due to them, as well as to himself, to state that he has sought with diligent and loving care to make the revision thor |