Principles of Equity. Henry Home, Lord Kames

      Order, a beauty in every composition, is essential in a treatise of equity, which comprehends an endless variety of matter. To avoid obscurity and confusion, we must, with the strictest accuracy, bring under one view things intimately connected, and handle separately things unconnected, or but slightly connected. Two <40> great principles, justice and utility, govern the proceedings of a court of equity; and every matter that belongs to that court, is regulated by one or other of these principles. Hence a division of the present work into two books, the first appropriated to justice, the second to utility; in which I have endeavoured to ascertain all the principles of equity that occurred to me. I thought it would benefit the reader to have these principles illustrated in a third book, where certain important subjects are selected to be regularly discussed from beginning to end; such as furnish the most frequent opportunities for applying the principles ascertained in the former part of the work. <41>