of the Commissioners, their provisions were in the highest degree liberal and enlightened. As we conceive it to be of the utmost importance that these provisions, and more particularly the arrangements for graduation in law which the Commissioners adopted, should be more accurately known and more maturely weighed by all branches of the profession than they have yet been, we have no hesitation in reprinting, in extenso, the following passage from the General Report :

"Degrees in law," say the Commissioners, "have for a long period been granted by the Universities of Scotland as honorary distinctions only. Considering, however, that the legal education of the country is for the most part carried on in the Universities, and that in some of them the Faculty of Law occupies a very prominent position, we regarded it as of the highest consequence that a course of study and examinations for degrees in that Faculty should be established. In Edinburgh, in particular, instruction in Law forms a most important feature of the University system, and the numbers of students is very considerable, amounting at present to about 260. In this University the strongest reasons presented themselves for giving to the Faculty of Law a more extended constitution than it possessed when we began our labours; and a consideration of these grounds justified, in our opinion, the course which we adopted of reviving the chair of Public Law, which for some years had been in abeyance, and of imparting a new character to the Professorship of History, which, as a chair in the Faculty of Arts, directed to the purposes of general education, had not been successful in attracting students."

The Commissioners, after referring to the recommendation contained in the Report of the Faculty of Advocates, from which we have already quoted, and a corresponding memorial which the Faculty submitted to Government, to the effect that the scheme of University instruction in law should comprise courses. of lectures on International Law, both public and private, and also a course of lectures on Constitutional Law, thus proceed :

"To these recommendations of the Faculty of Advocates we were naturally disposed to attach the greatest weight; and after a careful consideration of the subject, we resolved to follow the course which our ordinance, No. 23, subsequently embodied, of directing that the professor of the revived chair of Public Law should lecture on International Law, and of assigning to the Professor of History, whom we introduced as a member into the Faculty of Law, the department of Constitutional Law, and History. By the same ordinance, we also required the Professor of Civil Law and the Professor of Scots Law to deliver courses of lectures during the summer, in addition to their usual winter courses.

"By these arrangements, the system of lectures in the Faculty of Law in the University of Edinburgh has been established on such footing as to give students the opportunity of obtaining complete instruction in the various departments of law. We were therefore encouraged in considering

the subject of graduation in law, to regard it as no longer impossible to prescribe such a course of study for the degree as should secure to it importance as a mark of high legal education.

After stating that they had called into their counsels both the Faculty of Advocates and other legal bodies in Scotland, the Commissioners proceed :

"The conclusion at which we arrived, after much consideration, was, that there should be one degree in law conferred after examination; that that degree should be granted only to graduates in arts; that it should be considered as a mark of academical, and not of professional distinction; and that it should, therefore, be subject to such conditions as would imply a more extended course of legal study, and the possession of higher attainments than are ordinarily required for mere professional purposes. The introduction of a degree of this high character which the enlarged constitution given to the Faculty of Law in Edinburgh now renders possible, appears to us likely to be instrumental in elevating the standard of legal education in the country.

"The general ordinance, No. 75, for the regulation of degrees in law, is based on these views. It provides that the degree of Bachelor of Laws shall be conferred only on graduates in arts; and that the course of legal study for the degree shall extend over three academical years, and include attendance on a distinct course of each of the six departments of Civil Law, Law of Scotland, Conveyancing, Public Law, Constitutional Law, and History, and Medical Jurisprudence. The examiners, who are to be six in number, are directed, in judging of the qualifications of candidates, to have special regard to their acquirements in public law and constitutional history. Attention to this provision we consider of importance, with a view of securing, as far as possible, that the degree shall not be regarded as a mere test of professional knowledge.

"The University of Edinburgh, in which there is now a professor in each of the six branches above specified, is the only University in which the whole of the course of study can be prosecuted. But each of the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen affords the means of completing a part of the necessary course; and a provision of the ordinance enables a student to proceed to a degree in one University, although one of his three years of study may have been spent in another.

"The ordinance provides that the degree of Doctor of Laws shall be conferred, as heretofore, as an honorary degree only. With the usage of the Universities in that respect, we thought that there was no occasion to interfere."

During the very short period that has elapsed since their enactment, the operation of these regulations has, on the whole, been highly satisfactory. Five gentlemen graduated in law, at the end of last winter's Session, and there is every reason to believe that, before many years, the degree of LL.B. will be regarded as a passport to practice, quite indispensable for all the higher professional positions. The enlightened provision in the

Procurator's Act (28 and 29 Vic., c. 85, sec. 5), by which the degree is made equivalent to and adopted as a substitute for all examinations whatever, holds out good hope that it is already taking hold of the profession generally throughout the country. In one respect only has the expediency of the ordinance been questioned. It has been said that the condition that every candidate for the law degree shall present himself in the wedding-garment of a graduate in Arts, operates as a positive prohibition of all but the wealthier members of the profession, and renders it impossible that legal should ever become coextensive with medical graduation. Absolutely there can be no doubt that the Commissioners were right. It is only by placing such a preliminary barrier before its portals that the sanctity of the Temple of Jurisprudence can be preserved, and the reverence for its ministers maintained. But relatively to the present position of the profession throughout the country, the argument for modification possesses much plausibility. If the question be between a humbler form of graduation, and no graduation at all, there is much to be said for the former alternative, and the following scheme suggests itself as worthy of consideration :

1st. That two Sessions of attendance in the faculty of Arts, with a corresponding examination, embracing, we shall say, the Classical Languages, Junior Mathematics, Logic and Ethics, together with a full curriculum of Law, should entitle candidates to come up for the degree of LL.B

2. That a higher degree of D.C.L., distinct from the honorary degree of LL.D., which has long been dissevered from the Faculty of Law in everything but in name, should be instituted; and that all Bachelors of Law, who were also Graduates in Arts, should be eligible for this degree, after the lapse of five years, without further examination.

Other analogous schemes have been proposed, and we throw out that which for the present occurs to us the most feasible, only for the purpose of showing that if the object of extending graduation to the inferior branches of the legal profession be regarded as desirable, a way to it may be found.

When the University Commissioners began their labours in 1858, the most flagrant deficiencies, though not the only ones in the Law Faculties of our Scottish Universities, were the following courses of lectures-all of which are held essential to such a Faculty in the continental Universities, and several of which,

at such Universities as Berlin, and Bonn, and Heidelberg, are represented by several professors.

1st, A course in which the science is mapped out, and its skeleton, so to speak, is presented to the student. This course, which in Germany is called Legal Encyclopædia (juristische Encyclopædie), and which we might perhaps most aptly characterise as the Institutes of Jurisprudence, is usually a preliminary one, serving as an introduction to the study, though occasionally it takes the form of an ultimate résumé, which is presented to the student at the termination of his career. In the former case, in which its utility is most obvious, it corresponds to the old conspectus, the function of which, in the Medical Faculty, has been familiar in this country since the days of Dr. Gregory, and is still discharged by the Institutes of Medicine.

2d, The Philosophy of Law, in which the absolute character of the science is vindicated, its relation to ethics is explained, its sources are examined, and, in short, the question how it comes to be law at all, is attempted to be answered. This, of course, is the old Law of Nature, the first subject for which our ancestors provided, but the teaching of which had gone into abeyance since the French Revolution.

3d, The Law of Nations, the Jus inter Gentis, public and private.

4th, Public Law, or the relations between the citizen and the State- -the ancient Jus Publicum, quod at statum rei Romanæ spectat. It is this branch of the science which we inaccurately talk of, and inadequately characterise, as Constitutional Law.

5th, Political Economy, or the doctrine of the acquisition and distribution of material wealth, with a view to the promotion of human well-being.

This latter subject, though nominally attached to the chair of Moral Philosophy, and placed in the Faculty of Arts (probably in consequence of the accident of its greatest modern cultivator having been a Professor of Moral Philosophy), has no more, nay, has less, relation either to that chair, or to that Faculty, than any other branch of the science of Jurisprudence; and it is in the Faculty of Law that it finds its place in all completely organised Universities. As the old arrangement, however, was left undisturbed by the Commissioners, it has remained outside of the Faculty of Law in Edinburgh, and is taught by the Professor of Moral Philosophy in a separate course of lectures. The other subjects we have

mentioned, though not in a perfectly regular or symmetrical manner, have all been admitted into the Faculty of Law, which, as now constituted, covers nearly the whole field of Jurisprudence, and forms, as we have said, the nearest approach to a complete School of Law in this country.

The fourth of the subjects above enumerated, viz., Public Law, belonged, in all reason, to the chair which bore its name. But under the designation of Constitutional Law, this subject, in its historical aspects, at all events, had been assigned to another chair, that, viz., of Constitutional Law and History; and as, apart from its historical aspects it could not be taught at all, it was practically removed from the chair to which it was nominally assigned. The question then came to be, to what extent ought the lectures to be delivered from the resuscitated Public Law chair to embrace the three remaining subjects? By the ordinance (No. 23) of the Commissioners, the only obligation imposed on the professor was, that he should "deliver a course of not less than forty lectures on International Law, during the winter session of the University, yearly." But the provision in the General Ordinance (No. 75) "for the regulation of Degrees in Law," that "the examiners, in judging of the qualifications of candidates, should have special regard to their acquirements in Public Law and Constitutional History," seemed to contemplate a wider range of teaching. This conclusion was strengthened by the explanatory clause in which the Commissioners state that "attention to this provision we consider of importance with the view of securing, as far as possible, that the degree shall not be regarded as a mere test of professional knowledge." Now, even public international law is "professional knowledge," though knowledge belonging to the profession of the diplomatist and the statesman, rather than of the municipal lawyer; whilst private international law is professional knowledge, in the stricter and narrower sense, which the Commissioners probably attached to the phrase. In this position. of affairs, the determination of the question rested ultimately with the Government; for it depended on the nature of the commission that should be issued, and the full title which should be given to the chair. The whole subject, we have reason to know, was maturely considered at the time by the Lord Advocate, himself one of the Commissioners, and his Lordship's ultimate determination was, that the old name of the chair should be revived, and that the whole of the duties which had belonged