will be briefly considered hereafter, it may be here observed, that there is one respect in which all the law-lecturers, of whom the author has had the means of judging, have seemed to him at fault. They do not attempt to enforce systematic mental discipline, to facilitate the acquisition of legal habits of thought and application. Law they give the student in abundance; few leading topics are omitted to be, perhaps, carefully parcelled out before him; but there they stop. No persevering attempt is made to teach him how to make this law thoroughly his own; the lecturer is, in short, little else than a speaking treatise, or digest; and unless the student takes very copious and accurate notes, all he has heard will share the fate of the Scotchman's thorough-paced doctrine," which went "in at ae lug, and out at the ither." And suppose him to have succeeded in preserving the greater portion of every lecture, after infinite pains, and much time devoted to the task; what is his advantage over him who has access, as all may, to the numerous and excellent text-books, to which the lecturer himself is indebted for his compilations *? In a word, these

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*"It is not," says Dr. Coplestone, speaking of the system of lecturing, "it cannot be the most effectual means by which instruction is to be conveyed to the minds of the majority of students."Reply to the Calumnies of the Edinburgh Review against Oxford, p. 149.

Hear also Dr. Johnson :

"People have now-a-days got a strange opinion, that everything

lecturers present the student with, no doubt, a welltempered weapon, but make no attempt to teach him how it must be used!-This is at once the sum of the author's objections to law lectures, and an account of the main object which he has proposed to himself in the present work. The topics here discussed, he cannot help thinking more suitable for the silent meditation of the closet, than the noise and excite

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should be taught by LECTURES. Now I cannot see that lectures can do so much good as reading the books from which the lectures are taken. I know nothing that can be best taught by lectures, except where experiments are to be shown. You may teach Chemistry by lectures; you might teach making of shoes by lectures." -Boswell's Life of Johnson, vol. ii. p. 6; and see ib. vol. iv. p. 98. "Thus," says Dr. Arnot, no treatise of natural philosophy can save, to a person desiring full information on the subject, the necessity of attendance on experimental lectures or demonstrations. Things that are seen, and felt, and heard,—that is, which operate on the external sense, leave on the memory much stronger, and more correct impressions, than where the conceptions are produced merely by verbal description, however vivid."—El. Ph., pref. xlviii. "The multiplication of books, the facility of procuring them, and the custom of reading them," says Dr. Parr, may be considered as reasons for the diminished usefulness of lectures."-" The tutor can interrogate where perhaps the lecturer would only dictate; and therefore, in his intercourse with learners, he has more opportunities for ascertaining their proficiency, correcting their misapprehensions, and relieving their embarrassments."— Works, vol. ii. p. 568.

It has also been suggested to the author, by an acute and learned friend, that there is this further objection to the system of lectures, viz. it is one necessarily assuming what cannot be,—that each pupil has the same abilities, and the same acquirements. Now in private teaching, the tutor can adapt his instruction to the peculiar wants of his pupils. The attention, too, is constantly kept awake by the consciousness that each is personally addressed.

ment of a crowded lecture-room. There are, indeed, so many momentous matters to be weighed by the student, so much searching self-examination required, as to mental and physical fitness for the legal profession, and the particular department selected, before he can come to a just and satisfactory conclusion, as loudly call upon him to devote to them the most sacred moments of his leisure and privacy.

With this brief intimation of the general scope and design of the present publication, the author hopes it will be evident that it has some pretensions to permanency; that its usefulness is in no degree impaired by the extensive changes which have already taken place, and still seem meditated in the practical administration of the law: that so long as there are any fixed principles in legal science, and any mode of acting upon them in practice,—so long as accurate knowledge, and ready clear-headedness in using it, are essential to a successful prosecution of the profession, must that work which keeps such objects steadily in view, be useful.-A very few words will suffice to point out the present state of the Common Law, and the position and prospects both of its students and practitioners.

Till very recently, the system of pleading and practice supplied the student, during the greater period of his pupilage, with little else than the most odious, vulgar, and unprofitable drudgery. It presented to his despairing eyes a mass of vile verbiage,

-a tortuous complexity of detail, which defied the efforts of any but the most creeping ingenuity and industry. There was everything to discourage and disgust a liberal and enlightened mind, however well inured to labour by the invigorating discipline of logic and mathematics. The deep and clear waters -so to speak-of legal principles, there always were, and will be, for they are immutable and eternal; but you had to buffet your way to them through "many a mile of foaming filth," that harassed, exhausted, and choked the unhappy swimmer, long before he even got sight of the offing. Few beside those who had had the equivocal advantage of being early familiarised with such gibberish, as "special general imparlance,"-" special testatum capias,"" special original,"- "testatum pone."-"protestando,"—" colour*,"-" de bene esse," &c. &c. &c. could obtain a glimmering of daily practice, without a waste of time, and depreciation of the mental faculties, that was really shocking. Let the thousands who, under the ancien regime, almost at once adopted and abandoned legal studies, attest the truth of this remark t. There

The father of Sir Matthew Hale-worthy soul-actually " gave over the practice of the law, because he could not understand the reason of giving colour in pleading, which, as he thought, was to tell a lie!"—Burnet's Life of Hale, p. 2.

"Emisit me mater Londinum," says the famous antiquary,' Spelman, "juris nostri capessendi gratia; cujus cum vestibulum salutassem, reperissemque linguam peregrinam, dialecticum barbaram,

was, in short, every thing to discourage a gentleman from entering, to obstruct him in prosecuting, the legal profession. Now, however, nous avons changé tout cela. There has been a real reform-a practical, searching, comprehensive reform of the Common Law; a shaking down of innumerable dead leaves and rotten branches; a cutting away of all the shoots of prurient vegetation, which served but to disfigure the tree, and to conceal and injure its fruit. Now you may see, in the Common Law, a tree noble in its height and figure, sinewy in its branches, green in its garment, and goodly in its fruit. All who will may climb into its boughs, and pluck the truthfraught apple.' Here, however, it may be permitted us to express an humble but earnest hope, that the gardener will know when to lay aside his knife; that he may not be prevailed upon by eager and ignorant by-standers, to

“Prune and prune, until the quick be cut,

And the fair fruitage fall beneath the feet,

Of swinish innovation."

How, then, do we stand? Practically thus.

A single statute, of twenty-three short sections only -the "UNIFORMITY OF PROCESS Act" (2 Will. 4, c. 39,) with the significant recital that the process

methodum inconcinnam, molem non ingentem solum, sed perpetuis humeris sustinendum, excidit mihi (fateor) animus!"— And see Burke's Abridgment of English History, book iii. ch. ix.