Blackstone defines law as the rules of human action or conduct, but what is commonly understood by the term is the civil or municipal regulations of a nation as applied to a particular country. The forms of law which govern civil contracts and business intercourse are distinguished as statute and common. Statute law is the written law of the land, as enacted by State or national legislative bodies. The common law is grounded on the general customs of England, and includes the law of nature, the law of God, the principles and maxims of the law and the decisions of the superior courts. It overrides both the canon and the civil law where they go beyond or are inconsistent with it. To the man involved in litigation the best advice is to go to the best lawyer he can find. But an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and the purpose, of the following pages is to furnish the ounce of prevention. Knowledge is power in nothing so much as in business law, especially since the law presumes that no man is ignorant of the law.