it will be necessary that greater advantages should be attached to the law degrees, and a greater amount of study and knowledge be demanded for their acquisition. Certain situations, now limited to barristers of seven years' standing, might be, with due precaution, extended (provided such other reforms accompanied as really rendered degrees evidence of study and ability) to bachelors of law; others, again, more valuable and important, to doctors. For other offices, again, of a mixed administrative and legal, or even of a purely administrative or official character, might, as a condition of eligibility, be required (after a certain period, of which due notice should be given) the degree of doctor. It is the influence of this regulation, to a degree, which contributes so materially to raise and encourage legal studies on the Continent. The conditions for the acquisition of legal degrees might, with the approval of the judges, be easily rendered more stringent. A rigorous examination, preceded by certificates of attendance on lectures and by minor periodical examinations at the close of each course, should be exacted. Optional courses can only be of avail when the taste and utility of such branches of study is widely and intimately felt. It would, perhaps, be better at first to have none but such as are strictly obligatory. Connected with the chairs of civil law might be instituted chairs of international law and colonial law, for such as might find it necessary or advantageous to attend them; and with the chair of English law, and subsidiary to it, chairs of constitutional, comparative constitutional, and municipal law, might successively be established, for the convenience and instruction especially of such general students as might wish to prosecute their studies in the universities farther than the proposed elementary legal course of the under-graduate.

"14. That, to render these lectures of benefit, your committee are strongly impressed with the importance of accompanying all lectures with as much private instruction and questioning as may be practicable, but especially with periodical examinations; which may thus afford tests not merely of a given amount of knowledge, but, to a great degree, of assiduity and perseverance in acquiring and retaining

it.

"15. That it appears from evidence before your committee that the professional student could scarcely acquire, even with these additions, that special and thoroughly professional education necessary for professional success at an university. The necessity of residence, the absence of living and practical illustrations of the profession itself, the general and theoretic and unprofessional or popular nature of the instruction given at an university naturally render it necessary for the education of the professional man that some institution more special and characteristic should be provided; in other words, a college of law seems not less important to the lawyer than a college of surgery or medicine to the surgeon or physician. It is the natural close, preliminary to entering upon practice, of that for which the university may be considered in many particulars as the preparation. "16. That this institution is to be sought rather in the application,

if possible, of old establishments than the erecting new ones, from the guarantee which the former give of order, efficiency, and permanency; and that such institutions are, to a great degree, to be met with in the Inns of Court' in both countries. In direct connection with the Bar, under the superintendence of its highest authorities, the judges, or of its most distinguished members, the benchers, with old prescription, ancient privileges, very large accommodations, ample funds, and venerable associations, immediately interested in the progress and honourably jealous of the fame of the profession, no bodies could be more appropriately selected, if willing, or likely to be more willing when once they shall have entered upon the task, than the Inns of Court. No violent or inappropriate innovation is attempted to be forced upon them. They resort only to their own ancient statutes and practices, and resume anew the original objects of their institutions.

"17. That, to give effect to this application of the Inns of Court to the purposes of a special or professional law college, it appears much more advisable that the several Inns in this country should co-operate; and, instead of each providing for its own use or that of its students a series of lectures on all great departments of civil and English law, that they should rather furnish each its quota to the general course in that department which is most congenial to its constitution; and to admit indiscriminately, on payment of the same fees, all students of the Inns of Court, no matter of what Inn, without distinction. The four Inns would thus form, for all purposes of instruction, a sort of aggregate of colleges, or, in other words, a species of law university.' The 'King's Inn' in Ireland, adopting the same course, but forming one body, would, like its university, be at the same time college and university.

"18. That, in order to give full effect to these lectures, it appears to be advisable that entrance into the inns of court, like entrance into an university, should be preceded by an examination by way of matriculation, to which should be considered equivalent a degree in arts, but especially, if the changes above recommended were carried into effect in the universities, a degree in law. The lectures should be accompanied with questioning and examination daily, and with an examination of greater length and minuteness at the termination of each course. Finally, before applying for admission to the bar, the student should be required to pass a probationary or qualifying examination, and permitted to go through an additional one for honours, the notice and record of which, after examination, should be kept and published. It has been doubted how far the benchers would be authorized to impose such regulations, but the imposition of certain exercises (though now merely formal), and the condition required of attendance on dinners, seems a very distinct exercise of such power, whatever may be thought of the manner in which it is exercised.

"19. That the appointment or revocation of the professors should be left to the governing bodies of the respective inns, as well as their

endowment; that the endowment should be partly paid by salary and partly by fees, thus combining independence with motives for exertion; the number of lectures regulated as well as hours when given on the joint arrangement of several inns, and with reference to the subjects and attendance on lectures.

"20. That it would be advisable to begin with the great branches only of the law, but highly desirable as the system advanced to add such chairs as in the first instance the exigencies of the profession itself required, and in the next as might be of utility to the profession and to the public generally-such as chairs of international, colonial, constitutional law, medical jurisprudence, municipal and administrative law, &c. &c. In this view also, and for the purpose of giving more extension and at the same time more energy and efficiency to the plan, a system somewhat analogous to that in use in Germany might be adopted, namely, lectures might be given :-some suited to the public at large, or public lectures; others appropriated to the special purposes of the profession, or private;' and others again limited to the more diligent and advanced pupils of the professor, or most private;' and which last might advantageously be combined with attendance at the special pleader's or conveyancer's office.

"21. That the final examination should be left to a body of examiners, appointed by the inns in common and selected from each of them respectively, with the cognizance and approval of the judges.

"22. That all matters of a common nature might with advantage be discussed, adopted and executed by a joint body, elected from the benchers of the several inns for this purpose. To them might be referred the several questions of arrangement of the course, examinations, honours, &c. thereby virtually constituting them the caput' of this legal university. The period of office, mode of election, extent of functions, should be matter of previous regulation by the bodies themselves.

"23. That to give the same constitution and character to the society of the King's Inn, Dublin, to which analogous duties and powers should be entrusted, it would be advisable that it should previously be incorporated, but so as to guard and secure the relative rights and obligations of the two branches of the profession.

"24. That it would be highly advisable to substitute for attendance term dinners in the several inns, attendance on term lectures, the number and nature of which, and how far obligatory, and how far optional, to be determined by common consent and on an uniform plan; and that students in England and Ireland should be entitled to make use of certificates of such attendance, whether in the inns here or in Ireland, as qualifying them (other conditions being also fulfilled) equally for admission to the bar.

"25. That, in providing for the special legal education of a solicitor, a stringent examination should be required in proof of a sound general education having been gone through previous to admission to apprenticeship. That this examination should embrace, in addition

to the ordinary acquirements of a so-called commercial education, a competent knowledge of at least Latin, geography, history, the elements of mathematics and ethics, and of one or more modern languages.

"26. That, for the further education of the solicitor, it would be highly advisable he should also have, even whilst an articled clerk, opportunities for attendance on certain classes of lectures in the inns of Court, and also on others, of a nature more special to his own profession, in the law society of which he might happen to be a member.

"27. That, to render more beneficial societies which embrace the double purpose of surveillance over the profession and of instruction, it would be advisable to keep the purposes distinct, and to adopt, in the appointment of professors, rules analogous to those recommended to the inns of Court.

"28. That the examination of the several courses which the future solicitor should be required to attend, should be marked equally by a certificate and examination, and that the final examination, as a condition for admitting to the profession, should be conducted more in reference to general principles than technicalities (as appears now to be the case), by enlarging and improving the examination papers, and calling in some of the examiners of the inns of Court.

"29. That it should be in the power either of the governing bodies of the inns of Court or of the solicitors' societies to admit the certificates of attendance on lectures in the universities, to a certain extent, as exempting from attendance on their own.

"30. That it might be advisable to found law scholarships and other endowments in either the universities or the inns, or both, for the purposes of encouragement.

"31. That annual reports should be made to parliament of the state and progress of the system in all its bearings.

"32. That these arrangements should as much as possible be carried out by common consent and co-operation.

"33. That, for this purpose, delegates should be invited to meet from the inns of Court, the King's Inn and the solicitors' societies, Dublin, and communications for the same purpose should be had with the universities.

"34. That in the failure only or neglect of such invitation, or refusal to take active and efficient measures to carry into operation the reforms proposed, recourse should be had to a commission,-to be composed, however, partly of legal and partly of official members."

We will now state as briefly as possible the views to which these very important suggestions give rise.

We rejoice that the attempt to graft legal education merely as a collateral or subordinate study on the system of instruction pursued before entering on the period of legal studentship is not sanctioned. In our judgment there is a fund of general as well as classical and mathematical knowledge to be acquired in the days

of pupilage more than enough to occupy the whole time, without further study of the law than such as enters necessarily into that of history. The science of the law, and even, we think, the elements of jurisprudence, will be more successfully learnt after leaving college than whilst there. The time will be more advantageously devoted at college to the culture of the soil than to the sowing of seed which often perishes in a premature growth.1

The utter sterility of all institutional means afforded after college to the law student for the study of law are too well admitted to need much comment. We have degenerated greatly from the ancient institutions to which we belong. It is not indeed desirable, even if it were practicable, to recal the times when Inns of Courts were, according to Fortescue, nurseries of virtue as well as schools of law, where "every thing that is good and virtuous is to be learned, and all vice discouraged and banished." It boots little to bewail the days when men placed their sons there "to preserve them from the contagion of vice," when the discipline was so halcyon "that there was scarce ever known to be any picques or differences, any bickerings or disturbances among them." Neither are the ancient modes of tuition or recreation apter to the minds and bodies of modern students than "ipocras chely and pasty of buck" to their degenerate palates. Readings and revels, mootings and malmsey, must alike repose in the memory of the past. We cannot restore the cumbrous procedure whereby lawyers were fashioned of old. Nor happily are we bound down by our accustomed veneration of usage and the authority of precedent in adapting a new system of education to the necessities of our times, for he must be a sorry antiquary who is not aware that the very constitution and rules whereby these venerable foundations were governed were themselves so indefinite and confused that they were liable to be moulded according to the fancy or interests of the ruling powers of each period, as the contrarieties in the history of them clearly show. Nothing appears, however, more

The following answer made by Mr. Blakesly, one of the late tutors of Trinity, Cambridge, serves to show what a mockery and perversion is a law degree at that University:

534. Mr. Christie. Do you know whether the degree of bachelor of civil law is taken in the university with any other object than for the purpose of proceeding to a higher degree?-Unquestionably, I should say that, in many instances, it is sought for because it is a qualification for orders; it is accepted as a substitute for a degree in arts by the Bishop.

535. And it is considered an easier mode, I believe, of obtaining that qualification than obtaining a degree in arts?-I believe it is.

2 In his De Laudibus Legum Angliæ.