Finally about two years ago the whole matter was put into my hands. The original manuscript was lost, the text of the copy turned over to me was very imperfect, caused by the manner in which it had been made, numerous references were incorrect, and, having gone through fire and water, the paper itself had rotted.

Now at last the labor is completed and at the end of seventeen years after the author's death his book is issued from the press.

It is sent forth with the hope that the vital question he was able to discuss only in part may awaken the interest its seriousness and importance deserve.

Man Haque Leavell.

"COTESWORTH," Carrollton, Mississippi.

SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR'S LIFE

JAMES Z. GEORGE was born October 20th, 1826, in Monroe County, Georgia, the son of Joseph Warren George and his wife Mary Chamblis George. In his early infancy he lost his father. His mother having married again, the family moved to Noxubee County, Mississippi, in 1834, remaining in that part of the State some two years only, going thence to Carroll County, where, as boy and man, the subject of this sketch maintained his legal residence until his death sixty-one years later.

He attended the then existing common schools of the South, called "old field" schools, in which was secured whatever of school training he received. According to his bent he took every advantage the schools offered and subsequently augmented his store of knowledge by laborious and persistent study of general literature as well as that of the profession of law which he adopted. He remained a diligent student to the end of his life.

When about twenty years of age he enlisted as a soldier on the breaking out of the Mexican War, was enrolled as a private in the First Regiment of Mississippi Volunteers commanded by Colonel Jefferson Davis, and participated in the battle of Monterey, where he showed that courage and devotion which always characterized him in every field of endeavor. At the time of his death his was one of the three names remaining on the rolls of Congress of all those who had fought in the war with Mexico. He took great pride in drawing his pension of $8 a month, which he handed over every quarter "to a trustee, regularly appointed by the courts in his county for that purpose, to give to the poor widow of a soldier of the Mexican war."

On his return from Mexico he completed his interrupted study of the law and was admitted to the Bar a few months before he became of age, his minority disabilities having been previously removed for another purpose. At the same time

he was married to Miss Elizabeth Young of Carrollton, taking out his license to practise law one week and his license to marry the next.

His young wife's brother-in-law, Judge William Cothran, already well established in the profession, immediately admitted him to partnership and brought him at once into contact with opportunity-in waiting for which so many young lawyers in these days are obliged to eat out their hearts.

In a very short while he was found giving marked evidence of that peculiar adaptability for the law which in no long time made him, if not the most, one of the most effective practitioners in the State. "Whether measured by his successes or by the skill, pertinacity, and power with which he prepared and conducted his causes, great and small, as a practitioner he was unsurpassed."

In 1854 he was elected Reporter of the Supreme Court of Mississippi, then known as the High Court of Errors and Appeals, and was reelected in 1860. In all he published ten volumes of Reports, as well as a Digest of all the Reports of the Decisions of that Court down to 1870. Their completeness and the rapidity with which they were prepared in the midst of other absorbing professional employments constituted in the minds of his brethren of the Bar a most remarkable achievement.

Of these several works General E. C. Walthall, who was more or less closely associated with Senator George during the greater part of the latter half of the nineteenth century, and who served with him in the United States Senate, said: "From the careful and discriminating examination of which these books give evidence on every page, it would be inferred that their preparation was the author's sole employment, when in fact they were issued amid the exactions of a varied and extensive practice, which took him much from home, and when private interests claimed much of his attention. In these reports, as in the digest of all the Mississippi decisions by which he . . . . lightened the labors of the profession, we see the proofs of that capacity for constant and effective labor with which our late associate was as liberally endowed as any man I ever knew. This Digest, though prepared after the close of the war and under the disadvantage incident to four years of interruption in the habits of a student's life, is yet a