The Sun.
London, England, 1846-09-01 00:00:00

Obrienin4

LONDON, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1846.

Wherever a reformation is necessary, there, in
time, it will assuredly make its appearance. However
bigoted may be the preference awarded to some
lumbering and ignorant system, whether in science,
arts, government, literature, or manners, it will ulti-
mately succumb to the dictates of common sense and
the arguments of common prudence. Formerly the
philosophers and historians of Europe imagined it to
be a degradation of pencraft if their books, and even
their correspondence, were not written in Latin ;
before MoßE's fragment of a history, and EALEIGB'S
History of the World, were penned, the masterpieces of
our national literature were composed, sometimes in
elegant and fastidious, but too frequently in loose and
ungainly Latin. After those eminent performances
had evidenced that our native tongue was sufficiently
dignified and sonorous for the narration of great events,
and the expression of elevated ideas, the pre-
vious ;blunder was corrected, and dog-Latin
reserved only for the recreation of the sizars
of the universities. The custom of carrying a horse's
tail upon our heads, in the shape of a flowing peruke,
has been in like manner abolished, and the covering
afforded by nature preserved. Wooden ploughs have
given place to others more capable of penetrating the
glebe. Political constitutions have been modified
from the compilation of the codes of LYCURGUS and
JUSTINIAN, to the production of the Code Napoleon
at the commencement of this century, and are still
undergoing gradually improvements. As human
perfectability has hitherto proved nothing less than
an impossibility, so have the productions of human
ingenuity or sagacity proved ever capable of being
remedied. The remedies are, indeed, forced upon
us by sheer necessity and by irksome experience, if
we be not previously convinced of their advisability.
Hence it is invariably considered as the best testi-
mony of wisdom to anticipate the inconveniences
which others can only recognise on their arrival, and
to make preparations for dilemmas which, if
permitted to transpire under no restraint, will be
inevitably productive of still greater and more serious
emergencies. It is always more graceful and
laudable to abandon an error voluntarily
than to be driven ignominiously to its
rejection. Sir ROBERT PEEL, by this timely move-
ment, acquired glory where the protectionist minority
only obtained for themselves universal obloquy and
permanent ridicule.

We are rejoiced to perceive that the societies of
the Inner Temple, Lincoln's Inn, and Gray's Inn
have selected the better course, or that they have at
least given some indication of their readiness to pur-
sue that better course, and by so doing to prevent a
resolute and, to them, somewhat graceless interposi-
tion of the Legislature. By submitting themselves
to a wholesome and natural description of moral
regimen, they will prevent the necessity of swallowing
some unpalatable Parliamentary bolus. Howbeit
these venerable and honourable societies do not
as yet display much knowledge of the mysteries of
intellectual dietetics.

After the committeemen of these three bodies had
duly deliberated upon the necessity of some alteration
in their present system of legal education, they ar-
rived at the conclusion that such a necessity
really did exist ; and the consequence of this
, conviction has been the publication of certain im-
portant resolutions. The solitary lectureship,
founded by the Middle Temple, is therein pro-
nounced to be utterly inadequate for the instruction
of the vast number of individuals annually called to
the bar, or, to speak more accurately, they deemed
it advisable that the advantages of such a means
of tuition should be under no restriction
whatever, but that every candidate should be supplied
with a similar boon. Acting upon this principle, the
resolutions propose that four additional lectureships
be founded, and, moreover, that a certificate of
having attended at least two of the courses of these
hypothetical or prospective lectures should be a ne-
cessary qualification for a barrister. So far the
arrangement is almost as much as might reasonably
have been expected under the circumstances, but
ONLY so far ! Certificates of having attended so
many lectures upon jurisprudence will be required,
but it will be wholly unnecessary for the bearer of
the certificate to evince the fact of his having gleaned
one lonely morsel of information from that attend-
ance ! As well might a professor of modern philoso-
phy shut a student up in his chamber with a copy of
BACON'S " De Augmentis" during so many hours in
the course of twelve months, and flatter himself that,
by so doing, he had instilled into the learner's mind
a thorough appreciation of the inductive
method of reasoning! Never was a more
lame and preposterous expedient resorted to by
judicial sages in council assembled! Candidates for
the bar, besides handling a knife and fork during so
many terms, and by that means getting on excellent
terms with their profession and themselves, are to
knock their heels together during so many
lectures ; but they are altogether relieved from
the necessity of listening to the lecturer, much
less of comprehending the drift of his discourse—the
examinations being voluntary with the candidates
Either the fabricators of these resolutions imagine
the seekers of honour at the bar would have even a
more insurmountable objection than Sir JouN FAL-
STAFF to answering questions "on compulsion," or
they must be labouring under the very erroneous
notion that legal students are the most industrious
scholars in the world.

Either these examinations should be compulsory,
or the additional lectureships should not be established
at all. A man can as readily be indolent in a lec-
ture-room as in his elbow chair, and we are persuaded
that these certificates will, in many instances, be littlt
better than guarantees that So-and-So has regularly
taken his after-dinner nap in the lecture-mom instead
of at his chambers ! that Such-an-one has punctually
whittled the bench under the very nose of Professor
DRACO, instead of smoking cheroots over the last num •
ber of Punch ! or that What's-his-name has periodically
played an imaginary game at billiards in the said lec-
ture-room instead of a real one at the divan. Nothing,
indeed, could be more signally fallacious than this re-
solution that the attendance at lectures should be re-
quisite, and the examination altogether superfluous.
Yet even this preposterous resolution is acceptable at
an acknowledgment that some reformation is requind
among the Learned (?) Gentlemen who aspire to
silk gowns. It is the first good step in a right
direction.

We alluded yesterday to the Second Report of the
Select Committee on Railways, or rather, we should
say, the draft of that report, prepared by Mr. Molt-
lump the Chatraitu of the Committee, the publioe.