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

been witnessed among the same party since
the war against the French Revolution ;"
and what did that feeling arise from ? He is very
ready to enlighten us. " History will not mistake
the meaning of the loud cry of triumph which burst
from the hearts of all who openly or secretly hated
liberty and progress, at the fall, as they fondly sup-
posed, of the great republic." History, before she
expresses an opinion as to its origin, must first hear
the loud cry of triumph, which is not yet audible to
English ears. In truth there is little enough to
triumph about. The American war has, thanks to
the partiality and pusillanimity of Ministers, been
henceforth productive of a good deal of humiliation
to England, but very little triumph. Neither have
English sympathies been enlisted so warmly on
either side as to call forth a passionate, much less a

:rantic excitement. It was a considerable time after

the breaking out of hostilities before the English
public, closely as they watched the war, took part
with either combatant. The origin. of the war is too
vague, its object too indistinct, to awake the sym-
pathies of a peace-loving people, who would have
warmly entered into a struggle whose motto on
either side was pro aria et fool's. As time went on
and the character of the conflict was better under-
stood, Englishmen realised the idea that commer•
cial self interest was at the bottom of the Union
fervour of the North, and that the South, after long
chafing under the democratic dominion, was deter-
mined to try her fortunes for herself, They grew
gradually to sympathise with a gallant resistance
in an unequal struggle; to feel that the men who,

without army or navy, trade or agriculture, held
their own with such indomitable resolution, were
truly of kindred blood, and became disgusted with
the faction, the greed, and the hypocrisy of the
North. If there are Englishmen so averse to free

government as to rejoice in American troubles, they
had better seek their source of enjoyment North
than South, rather in the cells of Fort Lafayette
than at Richmond or Charleston. Professor GoLD-

WIN SMITH, with his singular gift of representing
as virtues the very vices that claim our censure,
tells ua that in the North " personal liberty has
been secure to a degree unequalled, I venture to
assert, in so fearful an extremity, to a
greater degree than it was here under PITT, in
an extremity far less painful." That history,
upon whose veracity the Professor reckons so
much, must certainly have been strangely careless
in recording important facts, since we cannot recall
an instance of Fox's followers being sent over to
Paris, VALLANDIGHAM fashion, or being summarily
expelled from Parliament for the expression of in-
convenient opinions ; though, if report be true,
such an event occurred in the American Congress
not many weeks since. Yet the Opposition of those
days was certainly not backward in declaring its
views. England is, however, out of favour with
our author, and he attributes to our landowners the
darkest political vices of the feudal age. They
have no sympathy with freedom, no respect for a
i country where all classes are fairly represented and
share in the benefi s of government alike. Their
feelings are all on the side of the haughty slave-
holder who tramples his fellow creatures under his
feet and boldly proclaims his crime. "He was,"
says Professor GoLDwIN SMITH, " sagacious as
well as bold, and knew that a fierce denial of the
Rights of Labour might touch a fibre of latent
sympathy in revolutionary hearts." If we contrast
this with the picture of " Freedom and Slavery
grappling in mortal struggle for the possession of
the New World," we have the summing up of all
the arguments adduced in favour of Northern
supremacy. Unfortunately for the success of all
this eloquence them is a sturdy commou•sense cha-

and peasant, which cannot be convinced that it is
virtuous to countenance a thing when it is in your
favour, and to denounce it when it turns to your
disadvantage. Englishmen cannot eee the disinte-
restedness of proclaiming abolition just in those
quarters where it cannot be enforced, and being
conveniently blind to the iniquity of slavery so far
as loyal Unionists are concerned. riley cherish a
wicked suspicion that if Norther:, ports were once
more to be made the medium of Southern produce,
or, what Professor Got,-(2,svlN SMITH calls " the fell
alliance betweent'iloslave-owning aristocracy of
the South anf' the Democratic party in the North,"
were ref r
Atated in full force, we should hear very
tittle more about the horrors of slavery, and the
" domestic institution" might go on much as these
evil-minded Southerners liked. So far as the steam
rams are concerned, which our author regards as a
matter of such serious import that their escape from
the Mersey will involve England in an American
war, the question as it at present stands is rather an
awkward one for the Federals. Possibly, when
this pamphlet was penned, the author was unaware
of the singular revelations as to certain documents
connected with the rams. The evidence which
shook Earl RUSSELL'S nerves, which winged Mr.
SEWARD'S fury, and which " in the simplicity"
of his heart an English law officer accepted as
genuine, has been proved to be decidedly, unmis-
takeably, inconveniently false. If only the mistake
had not come out until after the trial ! But as it
has so inopportunely come to light, perhaps the
advocates of the North had better let the matter
alone, at least until an English court of law has
examined into it a little more closely. Meanwhile
the Federal cause has certainly gained an enthu-
, elastic advocate—only, unfortunately, eloquence
and earnestness will not always gain the day at
, the bar of public opinion, when the whole, weight
of the evidence is on the other side.

We lately alluded, in a leading article, to the 1
present state of legal education for students about
to become barristers-at-law, both as regards the
recent examination lately appointed prior to ad-
mission as a student, and the present examination,
or rather mode of allowing students to be called to
the bar without undergoing an examination at all,
or else running into the opposite extreme, and ex-
pecting too much from those who aim at honours
and distinction, and who hare the energy and in-
dustry not to be satisfied with a nine years' atten-
dance at lectures, or else in a barrister's or pleader's
chambers, as the case may be. About nine years
ago, as we all know, there was established the
system of appointing civil servants of the East India
Company by free and open competition, not at-
tempting ito regulate, ibut absolutely excluding
the principle of patronage altogether. After well-
nigh ten years' experience of the said examination,
we can speak most favourably, and we also see that
this examination has had the most marked and
beneficial effects upon the general state of education,
inducing a spirit of rivalry among our universities
unknown before, and laying the foundations for
exertions which must result in the elevation of the
intellectual standard of each, in remedying de-
ficiencies, and placing education in the hands most
competent to conduct it. The scientific departments
of the military service have also 'keen thrown open
to free competition with results equally beneficial to
all schools and all universities throughout the king-
dom. In the last century examinations were com-
pletely at a discount, a'ad in fact were almost like
gas, the metropolitan police, and railroads, things
wholly unknown and concealed in the womb of
time. The great change between the present and
the pot generation cooeiete in Chia, that the former

is lenient to the school boy, and spares the rod, but
inflicts great severity on the young man, and spares
not his nerves; the latter, while it was over indul-
gent to the young man, spared not the extremities
of the school boy. Merit, as the only ground of ap-
pointment,and examination as the only test of merit,
are now admitted principles. This being the state
of public feeling and opinion, the representatives of
the Inns of Court produce, three times a-year,
their system of examination. They also, like the
East India Company, the Secretary at War, and the
public departments, have something to give away.
They have been intrusted wi'h the responsible and
honourable duty of admitting those whom they shall
think worthy to practise in the courts of law, and
to undertake a vast number of cffices of fitness, for
which their certificate of admission is the only test.
The same obligation which binds a bishop to lay
hands suddenly on no man extends to these bodies,
to which is committed the power of admission—a
high and responsible office. We ourselves
know an instance, about half a century ago, of
a young man getting ordained by simply telling
the bishop he was the nephew of a dignitary of the
Church, and had been educated at a public school
where his uncle, the aforesaid dignitary, had been
head master. It would be worse than idle to ask
if such a state of things would be tolerated in these
days. But it all the more tends to sweep away the
last vestige of a bad state of things belonging to a
corrupt and bygone age. It is not very difficult to
point out how scandalously the benchers of the four
Inns of Court neglect their duty, and how utterly
unfit they are to have the power of calling men to
the bar. The system of the Inns of Court is to pro•
pose to those who choose to submit to it what we
doubt not is a fair and searching examination, and
even—as we pointed out in a recent leading article
—too far in many respects, but to have it entirely
optional to candidates whether they will be exa-
mined or not. In order to induce them to be exa-
mined bribes, in the shape of studentships and re-
missions of terms, are held out; bat if these induce-
ments fail it is quite competent to the student, by
attending a certain number of lectures, or even this
latter he may now since the commencement of the
present year, Hilary Term, 1864, escape, if, as we
have already pointed out, he chooses to pass a year
in the chambers of a barrister, conveyancer, or
special pleader. We can imagine no scheme more
discreditable or more inefficient than this. An
examination is not a good thing of itself, not an end
but means to the attainment of that end. Far
be it from us to assort that the man who comes out
highest at an examination either at Oxford, Cam-
bridge, the London University, the Ines of Coart,
or Trinity College, Inutile, will make the best
practicing Barrister either at Chambers or in Court,
but examinations are adjancts and very useful and
powerful adjuncts too. The use of an examination
previous to a call to the bar would be to ascertain
that every student, before being called, possessed at
least the minimum of qualification which may be
reasonably expected from a member of a learned
profession. To the highly qualified student the
examination is a mere form, but to a student of
inferior qualification it is a serious but most useful
ordeal. To be of any use at all an examination must
be universal, for otherwise it does not succeed in its
main object, that of fixing the standard of the pro-
fession, and ascertaining a point below which no
man's qualification who ass once been admitted into
it can possibly fall. Apply these principles to the
practice of the Inns of Court. If a student be
highly qualified, that is possessed of much more
than that amount of qualification which would
justify his admission into the profession of a Bar-
rister, if, in fact, examivation would be to him a
mere useless form, many inclucemeuis are held
out in order to pErsuide him to undergo it.
Candidates are likely to have recourse to it just
in proportion as such recourse isunneeessary. Those
who are examined are not thinking of their call to
the bar, but of theirscholership or remission of terms.
Wherever the test is applied it will be in a case in
which it might be dispensed with, but by mixing
up the studentship with the examination, and
making the examination optional, the benchers
have in fact provided that the student is not neces-
sarily the best man of his year, but only the best of
those who are wiling to compete. Take now the
case of the inferior student, the person against
whom the profession and public ought to be pro-
tected, to whom the test of an examination is a for-
midable reality —an obstacle requiring the strenuous
exertion of all his faculties to overcome. For men,
supposing them to be gifted with the most ordinary
degree of self-knowledge, there will be no examina-
tion at all. To what end should he submit himself
to be examined. He has not by the supposition the
remotest chance of obtaining a studentship or any
other distinction, and all he Gan possibly hope for is
the questionable honour of being plucked, and that
in an examination to which he was not called upon
to submit himself. It is the public iuterest that such
persons should be strictly examined. It is their
private interest that they should not. What worse
can be said cf a system than that it puts public and
private interest in opposition to each other, and
leaves every interested
Party to decide the question
for himself. We once more take the liberty of
warning thedepositaries of this public trust thus
scandalously abused, that they are presuming too
far on the patience and aoathy of the puulic.
We would entreat them to call to mind
the days of GEORGE IV. In the days of
GEORGE IV. Lords and commons then held
with fancied security the absolute control over the
representatives of this country. The annual motion
for Reform in Parliament had come to be a mere
form; but they were suddenly loused from their
false confidence, and almost before the smoke had
drifted away from their burnt rick yards they were
forced to strip themselves of their long-cherished
power of nomination. And so we would ask the
benchers of the Inns of Court, whether they flatter
themselves that that page of
history must stand
you
without its parallel. Can cheat yourselves into
the belief that political privations are less endurable
than ignorant barristers, that though a rotten
borough could not be endured, the Inns of Court,
in their present most
disgraceful condition, can ?
Thini;ing men have, with marvellous unanimity,
come to the conclusion that the deplorable state of
law and jurisdiction amongst us arises from the
narrow and imperfect education of our lawyers, dis-
qualifying them alike from laying down sound prin-
ciples, or applying them, when laid down,
in a congenial spirit. For this the Inns of
Court, who have been trusted with, and have
grossly abused the care of, legal education,
are mainly, if not entirely, responsible. Legal
difficulties
may prevent the restitution of their vast
revenues to the purposes to which they were de-
signed, and from which they have been diverted to
the purposes of architecture and gastronomy ; but,
assuredly, no long time will elapse before a board
of Legal Examiners, unconnected with the Inns of
Court,
is appointed, without whose certificate no
one shall be allowed to practise at the bar, and who
shall merit by their ability and integrity that
public confidence which the Inns of Court have so
justly forfeited. When stripped of the power of
calling to the Bar, and reduced to the position of
the keepers of taverns and boarding-houses, the
governing bodies of the Inns of Court will probably

become alive when too late to the dangers of their
position, and peroeive how impossible it will be to
retain in their owr, hands any longer those reve-
nues, of the last excuse for retaining which, the
superintendence of education, their own misconduct
has deprived them.

LATEST INTELLIGENCE

[REUTER'S TELEGRAMS.]

THE WAR IN JUTLAND.
COPENHAGEN, MAY 4.

The Daybladet of tosday says:—

" The enemy is placing Fredericia in a state of
defence, and the town is being strongly garrisoned.
" The enemy occupies Kalb and Abeltoft."