The Sun.
London, England, 1864-05-09 00:00:00

arouse the emulation and tempt the ambition of the

students.

For further particulars of the proposition of the
Commisaioners, we mast refer to the abstract of
their report published about nine years ago. Suffice
it for the moment to say, here was the University
system of education imported into the metropolis
and applied to the study of the law. Without
pledging ourselves to an opinion upon any single
question of detail, we hasten to record our warmest
approval of the general principle. It is a fact that our
two great Universities do every year turn out good
mathematicians and classical scholars. It is another
fact that the Inns of Court in London have hitherto
not given ary legal education at all, or it has been of
so permissive a character as to amount to a nullity.
How can we expect to have a succession of good
lawyers if we will not be at the pains of training
them ? Many reproaches have been showered, and
with perfect justice, upon cur system of laws in
Englaed. They are illiberal, they are illogical,
they are patchwork, they are out of date, they are a
mass of frivolous formula and tiresome technicalities.
The question is who is to make them better ? It is
is vain for a layman to enter upon the task, for all
the owls, bats, and spiders of Westminster Hall will
do their worst upon him if he dare to invade their
holy precincts with the faintest corner
of a duster visible beneath his coat-sleeve. Are
we to look for assistance to the lawyers themselves?
They are men who have been educated in two ways.
They have been shut up for a couple of years or
more in the chambers of pleaders or conveyancers,
with no higher objects of study than the draughts
of pleas and conveyances, which it was their duty
to copy and re-copy usque ad nauseam. When
well saturated with these abominable forms, the
aspiring young lawyer pats on his wig and gown,
and for a time in the back rows of Westminster
imbibes more legal knowledge from the lips of the
judges—in other words, he learns to do just what
his predecessors had done before him. It is ob-
vious that from such a man little can be expected
for the improvement of our laws. We have hitherto
been employed in tinkering away at our laws as
, best we could to overcome the resistance of the pro-

`ession.

From the moment that a sound system of legal
education is at work we shall find our task all the

lighter. We must train up workmen fit for the work
which an enlightened community has a right to
expect at their hands. The Bar has .hitherto been
rather an illberal than a liberal profession. There
has been plenty of hair.spliting, plenty of acuteness
in cross examination, and of sharp practice not a
little, but with the exception of half a dozen great
Judges and Advocates, our, lawyers have been
rather behind than before the great mass of the edu-
cated community. Another advantage which would
probablyfollow from the system of public examination
and public honours in law would be that it would
have a tendency to diminish the evils of nepotism
and attorney favour. Attorneys are often enough
unjustly blamed for preferring their own proteges
to strangers, but how are we to select from among
the younger barristers in the back rows the men
who are really most likely to do them good service.
Surely the senior wrangler in law will have a
chance given him at a far earlier period than the
mute inglorious MANSFIELDS who have pined and
died in obscurity under the present most disgrace-
ful system.