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importance, and cannot be taken up in a mere cursory way Our Irish land law is generally defended merely for Irish reasons- -as one called for by the special necessities of an artificially produced state of society. It remains for farther inquirers to examine whether it may not be justified on wider and more cosmopolitan grounds; whether it may not be a sample of codification, called for by the exigencies of the state of things which we have described as characteristic of modern society in wealthy countries.

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The next great palliative of the evils, hitherto indeed more apprehended than real, which threaten the country from the monopoly of so much of her soil in the hands of few owners, might be found in restriction on the present right of tying up property (landed or personal) after death. We do not speak of this as a measure likely to prove of much consequence economical point of view, if it were enacted and enforced (which would be a more difficult matter). The restrictions on the free transfer of land which the present law practically imposes are, we are convinced, greatly exaggerated by the impugners the existing system. When Mr. Wren Hoskyns tells us that 6 a far greater proportion of the land of England than is ' rally believed is in the possession of tenants for life so heavily burdened with settlement incumbrances that they have not the means of improving the land which they are obliged to of hold,' it is almost enough to point to the general aspect this highly cultivated portion of the earth's surface, in order to convict him of over-statement. Still it must be remembered that every relaxation of the system of settlement, so far as it goes, aids the great cause of free transfer of land, and con sequently of agricultural improvement. But it is far less on economical than on political grounds that we think this question one of the most pressing of those which are certain to hold a large share in the speculations of our immediate successors. If property in land is to be maintained at all, and if at the same time society is to assume more and more the democratic form into which it is now growing, we cannot, for our own part, conceive the possibility of our proprietors being much longer allowed to preserve the strange privilege which they now enor -unique, we believe, in Europe, except as regards some fiefs in regions where that mediaval distinction is still kept up -of carving out future estates on their soil for hypothetical possessors, and solemnly appealing,' as it has been expressed. from one generation to the next.' We shall be told, no doubt. that this privilege of founding and providing for the main

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tenance of future landed families is one

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English feelings and traditions, and valued as highly by the yeoman-freeholder where he exists, and by the creator of a new suburban demesne, as by the peer or the millionnaire. This is to some extent true, but only to some extent; the creation of particular estates by way of settlement, in small properties, is an eccentricity at best; while it is the recognised system of our aristocracy, in so far as that aristocracy is least in accordance with the spirit of the present age, and of that which is fast approaching. We should doubtless be deemed very nearly as revolutionary as Mr. Mill himself, were we to suggest that society would still survive and flourish, wealth would accumulate, and the demesnes of the rich would continue to adorn the land as they do now, if no disposal whatever of property after death by deed or will were permitted unless absolute, saving only such obvious exceptions as justice and public policy demand, such as life provision for widows and industrial leases. Nor will we back our proposal by humiliating threats, or suggestions that to the choice between this prohibition and an agrarian law we may come at last. We should wish it to be judged on its merits only, and leave to time and to the thoughts of temperate men, the care to remove the prejudices, as for our own part we believe them to be, which at present militate against the diminution of that anomalous and irrational control over the contingent future which British law supposes and encourages.

ART. VII.—1. Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Legal Education. 1846.

2. Report of the Commissioners appointed by Her Majesty to Inquire into the Arrangements of the Inns of Court and of the Inns of Chancery for Promoting the Study of the Law and Jurisprudence. 1855.

3. Report of a Meeting held at Lincoln's Inn Hall on the 6th July, 1870, with the Address of Sir Roundell Palmer on the Formation of the Legal Education Association.

4. Debate in the House of Commons on Legal Education, 14th and 26th July, 1871.

WE

E propose to sketch the History of Legal Education in England, hoping possibly to aid the determination of two questions much agitated-namely, whether barristers are now adequately prepared for the performance of their functions; and whether solicitors or attornies are, or are not, now

excluded from advantages which they ought to possess and which they formerly enjoyed?

However startling the fact may appear, it is well ascertained that until the reign of Henry III. all the higher judicial offices in this country were filled by archbishops and bishops, abbots, priors, and deans. The advocates who practised in the secular as well as in the ecclesiastical tribunals were exclusively clerical. There were attornies in those days, but no barristers. The clergy did their legal work ably, though not always without censure; but in 1217 they were prohibited by canon from acting in the temporal courts.* The change proved extremely mischievous to the community; important duties which had previously been performed by men of skill being now from necessity committed to practitioners at once ignorant and, as it soon appeared, unscrupulous. The chronicles of Henry IIL and of his successor present a frightful and marvellous picture of professional corruption and extortion, no less than ten out of the twelve common law judges having been convicted of falsifying records and taking bribes for their decisions. The consequence was that in 1290, moved by the complaints and remonstrances of his subjects, Edward I. issued a commission of inquiry, addressed to his chief minister, Henry de Lacythe famous Earl of Lincoln-and Lord Chancellor Burnellthe greatest law reformer of his age, rescued by Lord Campbell from oblivion. The Report to Parliament, in the following year, gave a startling representation of the venality and profligacy which prevailed in the profession generally, and in all the legal offices, high and low. A remedy was called for to correct the existing evil. Provision was also required for the future; the country demanding a new race of candidates for the forum and the bench, from which the clergy had for nearly a century been excluded.

To accomplish both purposes, the great monarch then on the throne issued, in the year 1292, with the sanction of Parliament, a second commission, which was addressed to John de Mettingham, Chief Justice of the Court of Common Pleas (one of the two untainted judges), with certain associates,' who are

*Certain of the clergy appear to have disregarded the prohibition. It is recorded of William de Bussy, a learned serjeant, who flourished about 600 years ago, that having been called to account for professional malpractices, he claimed the protection of his holy orders; and, to prove his privilege, disclosed the clerical tonsure. Therefore Sir Henry Spelman suggests that the original object of the serjeant's coif was to conceal the tonsure of such renegade ecclesiastics as practised in the secular courts, although interdicted by canon.

not named. These Commissioners were directed to search throughout the kingdom for respectable and competent attornies, to do the work of the Superior Courts, then fixed at Westminster by Magna Charta; the Commission declaring that the individuals to be selected should alone, and none else, practise before those common law tribunals. The Commission further directed-and here was its most important provision -that students, apt and eager,' should be brought up from the provinces and placed in proximity to the Courts. They were to be chosen with discrimination; their disposal afterwards being left to the decision of the Commissioners, in whom a large authority was vested by the words 'de aliis remanen'tibus, fiat per discretionem ;' a discretion exercised, doubtless, with the concurrence, if not by the direction, of Lord Lincoln and the Chancellor, both evidently the moving spirits in the whole affair. The fortunate attornies, chosen to displace and supersede their unlucky brethren, had, we may suppose, on coming to the Metropolis, little difficulty in finding accommodation. But with the young students-the apprenticii, as they were called--the case was different. Invited by the State for a State purpose, they had a right to expect from the State the advantages and protection of collegiate education, known even at that early period; implying chambers for residence and teachers for instruction, in social combination. Hence the apprenticii were at once placed in the Inns of Chancery-public offices, which, retaining their ancient designation, are now to be regarded, in the words of Fortescue, as the earliest settled places for students of the law;' the germ, in fact, of what Sir Edward Coke calls our English Juridical University.

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The design was not merely to raise the intellectual standard of the legal profession, but to open to all classes the principles of that municipal code under which they lived, as distinguished from the civil and the canon jurisprudence, then too much affected by the clergy, and sought to be established by them. The objects contemplated by Edward L. and his ministers are not, indeed, so plainly unfolded by the words of the Commission as by the steps taken almost immediately in pursuance of it, by sundry regal and judicial declarations, and by numerous formal documents and contemporaneous descriptions, all supported by traditions at once uniform, authentic, and venerable.

Towards the close of Edward's reign, following out the scheme of the Government, Lord Lincoln, the first of the

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Commissioners-a man celebrated for munificence-surren-[ dered his town mansion, with its accompanying advantages, in Chancery Lane, to a body, we are told, of legal professors and their pupils. This fraternity have ever since been distinguished as the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn,' the first and the oldest Inn of Court.* Here the earl died in 1310, the Society taking its name from his title.

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The second Inn of Court, the Inner Temple, and the third, the Middle Temple, although of great military or knightly antiquity, did not become legally scholastic till the reign of Edward III.

The origin of Gray's Inn, the fourth Inn of Court, is that about the same period, not precisely ascertained, Lord Gray de Wilton granted to certain legal professors and apprenticii a lease of his hostelry in Holborn.

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All these bodies, the several Inns of Court and of Chancery, proceeded on the principle of a collegiate scheme, under the constant superintendence and protection of the Crown. During the long reign of Edward III. they prospered. In Richard II.'s time, 1381, they were invaded by Wat Tyler and his followers, who destroyed the Temple Records. In 1450, one of Jack Cade's declared intentions was to kill all the lawyers, and pull down the Inns of Court,' which, however, with the Inns of Chancery annexed to them, in spite of some popular reproaches, were resorted to by the most promising youths of the kingdom; the Inns of Court having the senior, the Inns of Chancery the junior, apprenticii. It appears indeed that the inmates of these establishments, more especially those of the Inns of Chancery, were not only numerous, but at intervals disorderly. They became in fact formidable by their turbulence to their more peaceful neighbours, the citizens of London. In 1454 a pitched battle was fought between the two communities in Fleet Street. Who chiefly distinguished themselves by their valour on this occasion does not appear; neither can we discover on which side victory was declared. But that the Inns of Chancery cut a prominent figure in the combat is made certain by the fact that the principals of Clifford's, of Furnival's, and of Barnard s— probably ringleaders-were brought to trial, convicted, and sent prisoners to Harford Castle. These incidents, though now ludicrous, are evidence of growth and importance at the time of their occurrence.

* Thinne, a learned antiquarian (praised by Camden), writing temp. Eliz., calls Lincoln's Inn the ancientest House of Court, before the "Temple.'

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