The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-05 00:00:00

cases and opinions, being themselves tongue-tied,
and mere dumbies after all; whereas the barrister,
the real acting agent of the profession, undergoes
not only no examination, but does not require
any further education than just to be able to
sign his own name ! And yet Counsel, unin-
formed and uneducated as he may be (to
) the deep disgrace of the Legislature and the Inns of
Court be it spoken) is the individual on whom falls
the responsibility of couducting the case, and to
whom attorneys and solicitors are to look up.
depend upon, and be guided by, Barristers are alone
allowed to plead in the superior courts of Westmin-
ster, and they are not responsible to their clients
for negligence or otherwise. Besides which, they
alone are eligible for numerous appointments of
considerable emolument and responsibility from all
which appointments attorneys are and always have
been excluded.

Some ten or twelve years ago, the Times
wrote an article, in which it stated that, ow-
ing to the introduction of our railway sys-
tem, our high roads were brought back again,
in the middle of the lElth century, to much the
same state they were in during the days of JONA-
TIIAN WILD and the mid dle or rather early part of
the 18th century. Now, there is an analogy bere
to the present state of our Inns of Court. Just
little more than 100 years ago our great commen-
tator, Sir WM. BLACKSTONE, thus addressed the
students of Oxford in the first section of his Com-
mentaries :—" Indeed, it is perfectly amazing that
there should be no other state of life, no other oc-
cupation, art, or science, in which. some method of
instruction is not looked upon as requisite, except
only the science of legislation. The noblest and
most difficult of any apprenticeahips are held
necessary to every art, commercial or mechanical;
a long course of reading and study must,
from the divine, the physician, and the prac-
tical professor of the laws (now in good truth
the attorneys and solicitors are the sole practical
professors of the law), but every man of superior
fortune thinks himself born a legislator." Now,
that this is the same state of things which existe at
present, it is by no means difficult to prove. The Bar
is at present the only public profession or employ-
ment of any kind to which access may be had
without the necessity of undergoing an examina-
tion ; and one of the principal reasons given by the
benchers of the Inns of Court for not making these
examinations compulsory is, that by so doing, we
should drive away many men of high rank and pro-
perty who are now useful ornaments of the Bar,
thereby proving the truth of what Sir WILLIAM
BLACKSTONE asserted about 160 years ago, that
" every man of superior fortune thinks himself born

a legislator."
We will here proceed to take a review of
what little improvement has been made in
the system of legal education in the Inns of Court
during the last fifteen years. In the early part of
1846 the Times newspaper wrote several articles
stating that the time had now arrived when there
should be some more effective mode of testing a man's
capabilities of being competent to have the degree
of barrister-at-law conferred upon him, than
eating a stated number of dinners, and having no
further training than would be given to animals
fattened for the Baker-street Cattle Show.
The result of this was, that in the following year,
1847, the benchers of the four Inns of Courts insti-
tuted optional examinations for students prior to
their call to the Bar. In these examinations, we
believe the students were only orally and by written
questions examined in the different branches of the
law, and honours awarded accordingly. Five years
later, in 1852, the Benchers, compelled by the force
of public opinion and the press, legal and general,
went a step further, and appointed five different
readerships of five different branches of the law,
viz., Common Law, Real Property, Equity, Civil
Law, and General History. They also made it
compulsory upon every Bar student, either during
one whole year embracing four consecative terms,
to attend the lectures of two of the readers on any
of the abovenamed subjects, or else to undergo an
examination previously to his being called to the
Bar. Now, in many respects, this change was
worse than the old system, because it professed to
have Bar students better instructed, and there is
(we speak in the present tense, for the system is
still in existence) no better guarantee for it than
there was prior to the year 1852, when the present
system came into operation. Few people will
(whether young or old) take the trouble to inform
themselves, unless they be compelled to do so, but
far less young men (and Bar students are, generally
speaking, among the number of these) than older
ones; and what has been the consequence ? Why,
that the bulk, say 99 out of 100, of the students
going to the Bar, have of course, preferred attend-
ing the year's lectures to undergoing an examina-
tion, and oftener than not have been asleep, draw-
ing caricatures of one another, or, perhaps, of the
lecturer, as the case may be, reading Punch, the
Times newspaper, or some popular novel, and very
likely at the end of the lecture, or attendance upon
their year's course of lectures, knowing no more
of the subject matter than if they had been 1,000
miles off.

Thus is the present system of legal education,
which has now been in existence for upwards of
nine years, and which has proved worse than use-
less in by far the great majority of cases. Some few
ambitious students there have been who have hon-
ourably competed for studentships and certificates of
honour, and have obtained them, but these have
been the exceptions and not the rule. The majo-
rity of men called to the Bar during the last 10
years may be, for any guarantee which the
benchers of the different Inns of Court could pro-
duce, just as ignorant of their profession as any
called under the old system, with the additional
hypocrisy of ;the present system professing to
educate, whereas the old one never did anything of
the kind. Until there be a regular compulsory ex-
amination for the Bar, which there is for not only
the other branch of the profession, and for all the
other learned professions, but even for every branch
of the army and navy and for all civil appointments
as well, neither solicitors, nor (what is much more to
the point) the public, have any guarantee that the
individual who conducts their case has any proper
knowledge of his profession, or that they have had
real justice done them. We now have a Chan-
cellor who has ever shown himself for a great
many years past the friend of law reform in all its
secret mazes and windings. It is to be remembered
also now that the future King of England has
become both a barrister and bencher, and has,
moreover, had the advantage of being educated
under a mother whom all England acknowledges
to be one of the most virtuous and popular
Monarchs that ever sat on the throne of these
realms, and who has, in the well-nigh quarter of a
century that she has been on the throne, shown
herself the friend of reform in all its branches.
We trust that another session of Parliament may
not be svffered to pass over our heads without such
adme:grurebel loic sy
of el: an rdal beri ste r an tg: Ira
ewmcoovne fder ar
es dn luepno having
t bye
attending so many lectures, eating so much
roast -mutton, and drinking so much port and sherry